This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
When is a lawn not a lawn?
donside
Posts: 16
We moved in here nearly 2 years ago. We have a lovely wildlife inspired garden, with rustic and limited neatness. Unfortunately the lawn, which is quite large, and altho' green, is 70% weeds, with daisies, dandies, dockens, etc. Would it decimate the greenness if we were to spray it with weedkiller. We are in our 70s and partially disabled and a reseed or re-turf is out of the question. The bottom quarter of the lawn is devoted to being a wildlife meadow, and ironically it has the best quality grass, but pleasingly it is rapidly becoming populated with clover and spot-sown wildflowers.
0
Posts
Hi donside. If you use a selective weedkiller it will only kill the broad leaved weeds and not your grass. I would love a grass killer that would leave my wild flowers safe
Thanks Ladybird for that. As a retired farmer I know something about selective weedkillers, but not in horticulture. I was worried that if I sprayed in the spring (next year now, or perhaps this autumn) I would have to suffer a brown lawn for all the summer months. Many thanks. D.
You're very welcome.
We moved into a house in the 70s with a large unkempt garden the lawn was very overgrown. All we did was mow it and mow it and mow it. When we came to sell the house potential buyers praised the lawn. We didn't tell them. We have been at this house for 30 years but for the first 20 years we had livestock and so didn't have much time for gardening. We have built quite a nice garden but used the same system for creating a lawn. It isn't quite as successful as the other one because I had to do a lot of digging out - including the Anderson Shelter so the soil is a bit variable. The weeds can't stand the mowing and the finer grasses gradually take over. Now feeding, no selective weedkiller, just mowing.
Okay Malcolm, thanks for that. It makes me wonder if there might be a half-way house somewhere between your advice and Ladybird's. Perhaps, come the back-end, I might do an area of selective and follow next spring with hard mowing, and see how it works. I am much obliged to you, and Ladybird.