lawn blanket? (bonus: fuck aspens)

TyrantCow

so i've pretty well killed my lawn. i live in northern colorado (if you have a firefighter here, tell them thanks from MooMan) and we get our summers hot and extremely dry. when i bought this place it had a nice and think lawn. i fucked that up somewhere, i think i should have aerated a couple years ago. now i have white (dead) grass and dirt spots here in there. this is especially prevalent in areas that don't get shade in the middle of the day. so, i figure i gotta take the metal rake to this shit and re-seed.

the trick is how do i protect these areas while the seeds do work? i've seen these 'lawn blanket' things. at first i scoffed, 'poor guy's grass is cold'. then, i saw the results, holy shit. googling 'lawn blanket' isn't doing the trick, either because what i've seen are for cold weather being used in the summer; or, i'm googling the wrong shit. anyone had any experience with these things? is this what i want? i've read the descriptions on the cold weather ones; they let water in and prevent freezing. same difference in summer?

bonus points:
fucking aspens. they are a boon and a blight. they're low maintenence and look... okay; but, the mother fuckers spread like herpes. got saplings(?) sprouting up everywhere in my lawn due to the aspens near my entryway (there's four or five of them in a grass-less (rocks) area near my front door). i cut them out of the yard, they come back. is there any way i can keep them from sprouting short of digging a foot and a half trench around the grass?

MetroidZoid

I'm going to assume it's close to summer weather there, if not already, and can tell you that the best thing to do is wait till fall to start seed. Temperatures drop, it'll be easier to keep the seed moist, and it will put down some roots and have a better start come spring.

Also, read what kind of grass seed you're getting. Ask around. Get something that's good for your area. Be aware the a lot of the cheaper seed mixes have Annual Ryegrass which, guess what, only grows one year. Fuck that shit

E: Addendum; what you need to get grass seed to germinate is soil temperature and humidity. The 'soil blanket' would help with both, insulating the ground and minimizing evaporation. But I've had just as much luck waiting to fall, spreading down a thin layer of organic material (topsoil, compost, what have you, but no fresh manure), seeding on top of that. Sure you could try to seed now, but you'll have to be out there every other hour giving the whole are a light mist, for the next three days at least

Also, when did the lawn go south? I mean, right off the back it sounds like a watering issue, and one that might not have been totally your fault. Too many people water their lawns every other day, some every day, and while it looks good so long as you do that, once you stop you realize that grass roots follow the water, and become incredibly shallow in that scenario. They can't last more than a week without water. However, after you get a lawn started, and practice deep watering (watering for longer periods, at night or early morning, letting the water soak down deep), then giving it time to dry out a bit, you'll get deeper roots. Combined with a drought tolerant grass variety and you'll save a lot on your water and time spend tending.

Kipling

Aspen grow and expand easily when they don't have competition. Your yard sounds like that. The way you describe them growing is the way they "reproduce" in the wild. They will also probably break if you ever get really bad winds once they are fully grown and have even the slight bit of disease.

mts

yea, now is probably not the time to grow some grass, especially with the dry season upon you. you need spring and fall before temps drop

Djeet

If you need lawn now you'll probably have to lay new sod as getting grass seed to germinate and establish itself during summer is a fool's errand.

It probably wasn't lack of aeration that caused the grass to die out, rather lack or regular watering or extended drought conditions.

If you want grass in the winter you'll want to seed towards the fall and keep the ground wet for the 2-3 weeks it will take for the seed to go to grass, then move towards a weekly deep watering schedule. If you don't care if you have winter grass I'd throw down a layer of compost towards the fall and water and see if anything starts to come back. Then overseed in after the frosts end in spring and try to get seed to germinate then.

TyrantCow

good shit good shit

so, yeah, i probably killed it then. i'm sure i didn't water it enough at some point. i just remember turning the time down on the sprinklers at one point when i was seeing pools of water in the street in the mornings after they ran. it's a four zone system (front inside/outside, back inside/outside) that the original owners had set to something like 10 mins 3 days a week. i knocked it down to 5 minutes 4 days a week. likely doing exactly what metroid said.

so i get to wait until fall. which is awesome because working outside for hours in the middle of summer is something i can procrastinate. is there anything i can do to help what's still there make it through the season? just dump water on it?

oh, and watering time. i've been told/read that you want kind of dawn conditions. i have mine kicking off at 5:30AM, the sun comes out around 5AM.

if i go get a hypodermic needle and inject round-up in to the sprawling aspen roots... will that work...

Foomy

TyrantCow wrote: »

good shit good shit

so, yeah, i probably killed it then. i'm sure i didn't water it enough at some point. i just remember turning the time down on the sprinklers at one point when i was seeing pools of water in the street in the mornings after they ran. it's a four zone system (front inside/outside, back inside/outside) that the original owners had set to something like 10 mins 3 days a week. i knocked it down to 5 minutes 4 days a week. likely doing exactly what metroid said.

so i get to wait until fall. which is awesome because working outside for hours in the middle of summer is something i can procrastinate. is there anything i can do to help what's still there make it through the season? just dump water on it?

oh, and watering time. i've been told/read that you want kind of dawn conditions. i have mine kicking off at 5:30AM, the sun comes out around 5AM.

if i go get a hypodermic needle and inject round-up in to the sprawling aspen roots... will that work...

That time should work just fine for watering, but you do want it to run longer than 5 minutes, do like 20-30 twice a week.

injecting roundup into the aspen roots would kill off the little ones, it would also have a good chance of killing off the mature trees, Aspen grow as a colony, where all the roots are connected and it spreads by sending up new stems, up to 30-40m from the other trees. An entire forest of Aspen is generally one single plant.

Djeet

Ideally you want to water in the dead of night, when the temp is lowest thus minimizing the effect of evaporation. This may work for you if you have a system that allows you to time it, but since I don't I usually water around 10PM or 5AM, and a good deep soak (1 hour, once a week for established grass). You'll want to make sure to abide by whatever watering restrictions of your locality and drought conditions. I'm in Central Texas, we're under relatively severe drought conditions (Stage 2 water restriction), and have St. Augustine grass, and this watering schedule follows the rules and is sufficient to keep it alive even in August (grass does start looking hay colored by mid July to early August, but it'll come back due to the variety).