Oh yes! It’s little grasslings!
A while ago, I posted about our backyard. Since I wrote that and took those pictures, the yard has been looking progressively worse. All the vegetation died, leaving us with a yard full of dirt(or mud, when it rains!). Last Saturday, before we went to Six Flags, my husband fertilized and seeded, and I’ve been faithfully watering since. For some reason, every time we plant grass seed I worry that it won’t come up, and this time has been no different. A week and two days of seeing nothing but dirt has encouraged me to continue in my worry, but this morning when I went out to water, I saw something green, and it wasn’t weeds. Yay!
It’s still really spotty and you have to look really carefully to see the grass, but I’m done worrying about the seed germination, and I’m excited to think about what our backyard will look like with some real grass growing in it. This method takes a whole lot more patience than sod does, but so far it’s only required a $50 investment, which is way, way less than what sod would cost.
WilliamB
Tuesday 2nd of June 2009
You can kill grass with the sun. Lay thick plastic on the area and weight down the edges with something heavy. The sun will heat up the area under plastic and kill just about everything there. It works better if you don't do it in the winter, of course.
Another way is to lay newspaper and cardboard down, then cover deep with all that mulch & woodchips. My experience with this has been mixed, I don't know why.
FYI, Roundup doesn't poison your ground but making the stuff creates a lot of noxious waste. I avoid it when I can, to the point of hiring someone to cut away my old sod (none of my neighbors have a backhoe) rather than using it.
The Frugal Girl » Update on our(formerly) poor pitiful backyard
Tuesday 12th of May 2009
[...] seeds sprouted last fall, and I’m happy to report that it’s doing well this spring. See? We actually [...]
CanadianSaver
Tuesday 14th of October 2008
Ahh I see :-) Glad it's growing now !
Annie's Granny
Monday 13th of October 2008
I wish I could give you some of my grasslings! After our maple tree fell, I originally planned on reseeding the area in grass, which I did. THEN I decided to turn the entire area into veggie garden, so I piled the wood chips over the bare ground (assuming the thick mulch would keep the seeds from sprouting), built the garden beds...and the grass grew. Every last seed, I think. I wish I had purchased stock in Roundup.
Kristen
Monday 13th of October 2008
Oh, I should have explained that better! We put down weed killer back in August, because there was really nothing but weeds growing...so we meant to kill it all. It had to get worse before it could get better. There were seriously so many weeds back there that they were choking out any grass that we managed to grow. It should work out ok now, though, since the grass has little to no competition at this point.