Bad neighbor - June 15th, 2005 at 09:37 AM
Hello all!
This being my first post, I thought I'd tell a little bit about myself before launching into the thousands of questions that I have. You will understand why in a moment, if you don't get bored with my rambling on, that is...
I am that person probably all of you have dealt with at one time or another. The dreaded neighbor who doesn't take care of his lawn. I have been this person for quite some time, but since I ended up living next door to my in-laws and have a natural buffer surrounding all of my yard except for the road frontage, I think everyone has pretty much left me alone. (Although my father-in-law will make the occasional comment about the grass being a little high and stuff like that.)
Anyway, I grew up in trailer parks in the sandhills of NC where the only thing we ever really had for grass was something we call sandspurs. And I hated mowing those dreaded sandspurs, because inevitably, you would wind up with them on your clothes, and thus in the house whenever you were running around with your bare little feet.
But I digress, basically, I've never really done anything to "care" for my lawn outside of the occasional mowing. I am a computer programmer, and although I bad-mouthed my father most of my life for being a workaholic, I have recently realized that I'm a chip off the old block as I have been putting in 14-16 hour days for the past 6 months. But that too is another story.
Basically, last year I started noticing I have a nice little stand of dandelions in my yard. And I decided I'd better do something about them. So I took a little roundup and spritzed about a half dozen of them to see how that would work. It got rid of the 'lions, but of course left six nice little holes in my yard cause it also killed all the centipede around the 'lions.
That's about all I did last year other than take a rake and completely deeply rake all the thatch out of my yard so that "my grass could grow better, and I need to aerate it anyway". Of course, I had no idea what I was doing, and it appears that all I really accomplished was to create a perfect growing area for dandelions.
I just finished mowing my "lawn" and I must say, it was very pretty during the day with all the thousands and thousands of dandelions in the yard. Of course, my 7 year old daughter loves them, but I've recently begun to ask myself what the neighbors must think of someone who rarely is seen outside of the house and only sporadically mows their lawn, thus creating a large dandelion field to spread their insidious offspring into every lawn in the neighborhood.
As I said, I've recently come to my senses and decided to do something about my lawn, hence, I have found this site and hope to get some help here from those of you inclined to help. Anyone still reading this now?
The yard I have was once a wooded lot, as I think most were at one time or another, and when we cleared it and moved in, we never really seeded the yard with anything, just kind of let whatever was green and wanted to grow in the yard do so.
I have centipede in large areas of the yard, and something that looks like bermudagrass, along with crabgrass and what I think is fescue, but I'm not expert. A friend of mine who works on golf courses told me that's what it was.
Anyway, I can live with all that for now, but the dandelions are more than I can take. We have a rabbit, and he loves to munch on the leaves, so I've been pulling the plants up and giving them to him, but at the rate I'm going, it will be 3005 before I have them all up.
I did cut my grass today, although I saw some "wish blossoms" as I was doing so, but I think I stopped the little buggers from releasing millions of seeds...for now. I have no doubt that very soon there will be more yellow flowers all over my yard. Let's put it this way, if I didn't have dandelions in my yard, it would be more dirt than grass.
I have recently browsed several lawn care websites and determined that part of the problem is the fact that I was intent on scalping my lawn every time I mowed. This didn't provide much shading to stop the dandelion seeds from germinating, so my ignorance has in more ways than one contributed to my problem.
Here is the first of my questions:With the description I have given of my lawn, do any of you think this is a salvageable situation? I realize that dandelions are probably always going to be a problem to some extent, however, none of my other neighbors seem to have them and no one has them to the tune of my yard. I am the dandelion king in this neck of the woods.
Second question:
If this is a salvageable situation, what should I do in your opinion? I have read about solarizing the lawn, which I think I might could do in sections, however if I don't keep the dandelions from spreading into sections I have reseeded, I will probably have the same problem down the yard, so solarizing followed by a thick layer of mulch/topsoil followed by reseeding is what I'm thinking at the moment. I've got a little money to spend on this project, but I'm not a millionaire, so that comes in to play also.
Okay, if you've read this long and you didn't move on to a shorter thread muttering about the audacity of n00bs, then I appreaciate your tolerance. If you can provide any suggestions/advice in this area, I would greatly appreciate it.
This being my first post, I thought I'd tell a little bit about myself before launching into the thousands of questions that I have. You will understand why in a moment, if you don't get bored with my rambling on, that is...
I am that person probably all of you have dealt with at one time or another. The dreaded neighbor who doesn't take care of his lawn. I have been this person for quite some time, but since I ended up living next door to my in-laws and have a natural buffer surrounding all of my yard except for the road frontage, I think everyone has pretty much left me alone. (Although my father-in-law will make the occasional comment about the grass being a little high and stuff like that.)
Anyway, I grew up in trailer parks in the sandhills of NC where the only thing we ever really had for grass was something we call sandspurs. And I hated mowing those dreaded sandspurs, because inevitably, you would wind up with them on your clothes, and thus in the house whenever you were running around with your bare little feet.
But I digress, basically, I've never really done anything to "care" for my lawn outside of the occasional mowing. I am a computer programmer, and although I bad-mouthed my father most of my life for being a workaholic, I have recently realized that I'm a chip off the old block as I have been putting in 14-16 hour days for the past 6 months. But that too is another story.
Basically, last year I started noticing I have a nice little stand of dandelions in my yard. And I decided I'd better do something about them. So I took a little roundup and spritzed about a half dozen of them to see how that would work. It got rid of the 'lions, but of course left six nice little holes in my yard cause it also killed all the centipede around the 'lions.
That's about all I did last year other than take a rake and completely deeply rake all the thatch out of my yard so that "my grass could grow better, and I need to aerate it anyway". Of course, I had no idea what I was doing, and it appears that all I really accomplished was to create a perfect growing area for dandelions.
I just finished mowing my "lawn" and I must say, it was very pretty during the day with all the thousands and thousands of dandelions in the yard. Of course, my 7 year old daughter loves them, but I've recently begun to ask myself what the neighbors must think of someone who rarely is seen outside of the house and only sporadically mows their lawn, thus creating a large dandelion field to spread their insidious offspring into every lawn in the neighborhood.
As I said, I've recently come to my senses and decided to do something about my lawn, hence, I have found this site and hope to get some help here from those of you inclined to help. Anyone still reading this now?
The yard I have was once a wooded lot, as I think most were at one time or another, and when we cleared it and moved in, we never really seeded the yard with anything, just kind of let whatever was green and wanted to grow in the yard do so.
I have centipede in large areas of the yard, and something that looks like bermudagrass, along with crabgrass and what I think is fescue, but I'm not expert. A friend of mine who works on golf courses told me that's what it was.
Anyway, I can live with all that for now, but the dandelions are more than I can take. We have a rabbit, and he loves to munch on the leaves, so I've been pulling the plants up and giving them to him, but at the rate I'm going, it will be 3005 before I have them all up.
I did cut my grass today, although I saw some "wish blossoms" as I was doing so, but I think I stopped the little buggers from releasing millions of seeds...for now. I have no doubt that very soon there will be more yellow flowers all over my yard. Let's put it this way, if I didn't have dandelions in my yard, it would be more dirt than grass.
I have recently browsed several lawn care websites and determined that part of the problem is the fact that I was intent on scalping my lawn every time I mowed. This didn't provide much shading to stop the dandelion seeds from germinating, so my ignorance has in more ways than one contributed to my problem.
Here is the first of my questions:With the description I have given of my lawn, do any of you think this is a salvageable situation? I realize that dandelions are probably always going to be a problem to some extent, however, none of my other neighbors seem to have them and no one has them to the tune of my yard. I am the dandelion king in this neck of the woods.
Second question:
If this is a salvageable situation, what should I do in your opinion? I have read about solarizing the lawn, which I think I might could do in sections, however if I don't keep the dandelions from spreading into sections I have reseeded, I will probably have the same problem down the yard, so solarizing followed by a thick layer of mulch/topsoil followed by reseeding is what I'm thinking at the moment. I've got a little money to spend on this project, but I'm not a millionaire, so that comes in to play also.
Okay, if you've read this long and you didn't move on to a shorter thread muttering about the audacity of n00bs, then I appreaciate your tolerance. If you can provide any suggestions/advice in this area, I would greatly appreciate it.