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Growing Grass in the Backyard (this not a puberty thread)
spool32
Contrary LibraryRegistered User, Transition Team regular
Contrary LibraryRegistered User, Transition Team regular
For the last (almost) two years I've basically abandoned my backyard. The reason was largely financial - water is expensive and my lawn mower was stolen. Anyhow, the result of that policy can be expressed in two lists.
A) Things my backyard has growing in it:
1) sticky weeds that gum up my lawn mower
2) violent, malevolent sticker bushes
3) some sort of milkweed that the dog is desperately allergic to
4) a couple of massive tree-like things that look and grow like weeds
5) cacti
6) feral cats
Things my backyard does not have growing in it:
1) grass
2) flowers
3) happiness
I'd like to change this! Unfortunately I have no idea how to go about it. My backyard is approximately .25 acres, and gets full Texas sun (95F-105F for at least two solid months every year) from mid-morning to late late evening. It has no sprinkler system. My first idea was to cut all the weeds down to the dirt, run a tiller across the entire yard, and seed it with new grass. Then I assumed I'd spend a season or two digging weeds and otherwise fighting the good fight. I did a little calling around though, and two different "grass" dealers have told me that's hopeless and I should buy $1700 in sod from them instead.
I don't want to spend $1700 on sod, but I really must do something. Our dogs need a backyard that doesn't leave them limping from burrs and literally scratching or chewing their fur off every spring from the allergic reaction to touching the weeds. Our kids need to be able to go outside and play in the not-street without spending an hour extracting stickers from their clothes. I need to grill hamburgers without setting off the smoke alarms.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to go about destroying the weeds without poisoning the earth Roundup-style, or any suggestions for what sort of grass blend will do well in full midday Texas sun? Am I really stuck with sod as my only solution?
A) Things my backyard has growing in it:
1) sticky weeds that gum up my lawn mower
2) violent, malevolent sticker bushes
3) some sort of milkweed that the dog is desperately allergic to
4) a couple of massive tree-like things that look and grow like weeds
5) cacti
6) feral cats
Things my backyard does not have growing in it:1) grass
2) flowers
3) happiness
I'd like to change this! Unfortunately I have no idea how to go about it. My backyard is approximately .25 acres, and gets full Texas sun (95F-105F for at least two solid months every year) from mid-morning to late late evening. It has no sprinkler system. My first idea was to cut all the weeds down to the dirt, run a tiller across the entire yard, and seed it with new grass. Then I assumed I'd spend a season or two digging weeds and otherwise fighting the good fight. I did a little calling around though, and two different "grass" dealers have told me that's hopeless and I should buy $1700 in sod from them instead.
I don't want to spend $1700 on sod, but I really must do something. Our dogs need a backyard that doesn't leave them limping from burrs and literally scratching or chewing their fur off every spring from the allergic reaction to touching the weeds. Our kids need to be able to go outside and play in the not-street without spending an hour extracting stickers from their clothes. I need to grill hamburgers without setting off the smoke alarms.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to go about destroying the weeds without poisoning the earth Roundup-style, or any suggestions for what sort of grass blend will do well in full midday Texas sun? Am I really stuck with sod as my only solution?
spool32 on
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i think you haev the right thought process, pull it up, til, round up. round up again. seed and water. the trick will be in teh timing, as you probably want to get on this now while the temps are still cooler. ideally you will kill any seeds and roots in the ground before putting down your new seed. and make sure you find seed of a hearty variety
What'd you use for seed?
here's a link by county for texas
http://mastergardener.tamu.edu/county-programs/
Please note that I do not actually know myself what those are, as I live someplace where the local flower is "mildew" and we water our lawns by bailing.
Edit: Oh hey, clover, there you go! I favor "rocks" myself, never gonna have to mow THOSE...
If you are dealing with a lot of direct sunlight problems you may want to get an arbor over your flowerbeds to mitigate some of the light.
The clover lawn thing, though, is totally new to me and sounds fantastic.
Does your yard border someone else's yard in a way that necessitates you take into account what they're doing?
You can do a mixture of shrub, prairie grasses, and the like that should suck moisture away from weeds while being contained. If you convert a fair portion of your yard to chaparral, you won't have to maintain it and it will still look attractive and natural -- without being full of nasty weeds. Weeds tend to grow in in-between areas since they're opportunistic. However, you can still convert an area of your yard to actual lawn or something similar for your dogs/you.
Just standard grass seed? I forget, was 8 years ago.
Note: I'm a 9 year homeowner in central Texas with turf grass in front and back.
Edit: I really like CTG (http://www.klru.org/ctg/) as a resource.
Maybe a section that's pea gravel bordered by railroad ties, maybe put up some kind of playset or fort for the kids to play on. You could build a dog run for the dogs to play in (to keep them from encountering the weeds, would also limit where you need to look for doggie bombs). Maybe look into xeriscaping some of the space (using native/local plants and rocks), maybe a gravel/flagstone walkway through the yard to separate the different zones.
That clover lawn idea looked pretty cool to me. Had some of that growing at my old place in the back yard, the stuff simply would not die. Wish I had thought to spread it around some instead of trying to fight it...
I had friends who went the grass seed route. They watered even more than I did (3 times a day for 2 months), and they bought a crap ton of seed. They bought easily 3x the amounts suggested to them on the packages.
And I'm from Boston, where it is relatively easy to grow grass. In Texas, you'll probably be watering twice a day for the rest of your life.
Rent the BIG tiller. It's hydraulic and comes with its own trailer. If not, a puny tiller will bog-down and stall. Some established weeds really have strong roots.
Till the crap out of the desired area. While you are performing your tillage, have somebody else behind you with a rake. Remove the weed chunks that are obvious.
When you think you are done, cover the area with black (opaque) landscaping fabric. Weight it down with rocks or anchor with with stakes. The idea is not to have sun hit the area you just processed. If not, you'll have new undesired plants growing within a week.
You can then take your time and landscape the areas that you want. Oh, and doing all this early-spring is best, before the weeds "wake up" for the summer.
My backyard is a desert from two straight years of drought and the dog's favorite pastime is rolling around in the dirt/mud back there. I'm gonna try to lay down some clover seed in a few weeks just to keep it from being a mud pile.
Anybody have any experience dealing with trying to lay down seed with a dog? He's gonna have to spend some time back there while it's growing. He's not destructive but I feel like just him running around will put a damper on things.
Don’t let the dog on the lawn until it’s established. I would just plan on a season of several dog walks a day if you really want to seed an entire yard.
Just noticed this on Wikipedia
so that might be worth looking into.
A couple of years ago I read an article about someone that just had to nuke their whole yard and start over, and they did that using a plastic tarp and other stuff to kill everything (no chemicals from what I recall), then replaced the topsoil. I'll see if I can find it.
Edit: Not the exact one, but it's close enough. http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Gardening/diggin-it/2011/0822/Soil-solarization-A-chemical-free-way-to-get-rid-of-weeds-and-unwanted-grass
My only reservation about clover is that it's a weed and while it will make your lawn look nice being full of it, if it spreads to your neighbors grass yards, they aren't going to be very happy with you. I don't know if there's something you can do to your perimeter to stop it from spreading.
Pictures forthcoming, for those interested! I'll try and do some before / after in the interest of science (and awesome farming).
At the moment I'm leaning toward zoysiagrass and clover, and sectioning off some of the yard as people have suggested, for not-grass covered with mulch or something and bushes that will resist the dog urine tolerably well.
I'd love to grow food but I think it'll just start out with a rosemary bush or two and a crapload of green onions and sage. Baby steps...
twitch.tv/tehsloth
Ultimately you're probably looking at Bermuda or Zoysia. I think you can get some crappy Bermuda that will grow from seed, but all the good stuff is going to be sod. And you're going to have to water it a lot. Zoysia is awesome, but expensive and tends to choke itself out if you don't put manure on it or something every few years. With Bermuda you have the upright stems, so you get to play the "I have to mow it every 3 days in the summer or the stems grow too fast and I chopped off all the blades and now my lawn is yellow" game.
This post is more pessimistic than I originally intended.
Credentials: lives in the south and owns a lawn and wishes he didn't
For clearing, depending on you areas ordinances. For some of the more obnoxious, nasty and difficult weeds, you might want to just consider burning them if that won't be an issue. If you set up a fire right, you won't need a large one and if you keep it going long enough on a spot, that will kill everything there.
Once you clear spots, definitely look into a grass that is local to your part of Texas or can grow there without lots of water. Do the same for any perennials, annuals, shrubs, vines or trees you're considering. If it's there purely as landscaping, you'll want something that doesn't need tons of water to survive in Texas. Soil is a factor here, along with ph, so you may have to tailor your set up around those two if you don't want to spend lots of effort on improving the ground, changing and maintaining ph or building raised beds.
As for growing things to use for cooking. Herbs will probably be your best bet for low maintenance. Again check to see what does well in your part of Texas without lots of water, I'd help but I'm mostly familiar with what works where I live and I'm pretty sure central VA doesn't compare that well to Texas. As for veggies, you're kind of screwed here, most of the stuff that you'd probably be able to grow in Texas will need watering almost every day. If the soil is shit, either go with raised beds (more work but no water reservoirs that need to kept free of mosquito larva) or lay down plastic for a container garden (less work but you need to keep the saucers free of mosquito larva - this is what I do in VA, I solve the mosquito problem by power washing saucers often enough to kill larva before it can mature, do feel bad for the frogs and toads though). Another fun one to do if you're willing to water everyday, vegetable trellis, you can grow cheery tomatoes, cucumbers and hot peppers reasonable well with this method. Just a note, I don't know if you'll have a long enough season for any pea or cabbage family plants, once the temperature get high enough these plants tend to either die or just not do anything of value if they don't die quickly from the heat. Granted with a few plants, you might as well do a raised bed if you want to grow them because most containers just don't cut it for growing them (acorn squash, pumpkins and corn come to mind), suprisely with the right amount of water and proper nutrients, melon do reasonable well in some of the more easily accessible large planters.
Or very poorly depending on whether or not you meant to kill half your lawn by being too lazy to clean up after a 4th of July party
Standing near the fence on one side. You can see an arbor-thing that I will be destroying.
Taken from the back stoop.
The other half, from near the back stoop.
All the cactus will be removed by a landscaping company... I might be able to get them to do a sizable portion of the work, depending on how highly they value the cacti I'm giving them.
I bring this up because those are the kinds of plants that will thrive without much maintenance in a xeric landscape.
The position of the ones in the center make it difficult to use a large part of the yard.... They're established but they're also very very sharp. Some of the spines are 4-5 inches long. You can't see it but on the other side of one is the massive carcass of another - they grow one massive stalk once in their life, and then die.
When I say massive, it was as thick as my leg and at least 25ft tall, with a series of disgusting flowers on the top that everyone says stank like rotten meat and drew hordes of flies to them. Then it died and fell over, requiring that I dispose of an iron-hard shaft of stinking vegetation. The rest of the dead plant is inaccessible without stabbing myself and there are mice nesting within. The other one will probably do the same thing within 3-4 years.
I want to replace them with a tree that will cast some afternoon shade on the back of the house and hopefully reduce my electric bill somewhat.
I agree with your sentiment that a grass lawn is too much water & maintenance, particularly where you live.
Wasps are a big problem down here in OK, but so is keeping a lawn green. The clover lawn seems like a great idea, however, I have three smaller kids (7, 5, and 4) and them getting stung is not on my to do list. Will mowing it to keep the clover blooms in check keep the bees and wasps at a decent, normal lawn level? Or is having that sweet luxurious soft clover lawn just going to attract the bees?
Were moving next week and I've been looking for a low water solution to having a lawn the kids can play around in. I'm still unsold on clover due to the high traffic of the backyard, but the front yard (side yard, sorta) could use a little greenin', if you follow me.
They are easy enough to DIY too.
Judging from these pictures, it looks like the best bet is a scorched earth policy. Once you've killed them with a tarp, drop in some clover/grass mix.