Ahhhh… that elusive thick green lawn

By isak, February 7, 2007

Well, it’s February and we are flirting with spring-like humidity and temperatures — the windows are open, so my mind turns to once again having a wonderfully thick, green lawn… something I lost when “the pack” invaded my little corner of the world. Combined with lots of rain, they quickly reduced my yard to a muddy, slimy mess with a few couple small spots of green. I developed the mentality that “green is green.” I am so happy to have green that I do not care WHAT it is — weeds or grass. Of course, this being winter, I have some larger areas of winter rye. But as I sit back admiring those areas, a voice in the back of my head tells me it is just a matter of time and temperature before that “green” is gone. So I am trying to guess what to plan to try this year.

I placed some sqaures of grass/sod in the yard last year just to see what would happen. Just as I envisioned, the dogs quickly tore those up. Okay, that’s not the way to go. Good thing they were free.

I have tried putting down some soil, mixing in some grass seed and laying fencing wire on top. That seems to work pretty well. But with 1 1/2 acres in their running area, I don’t think that is a feasible idea. Maybe I can fence off areas and do it piecemeal (sounds like that might take a few years).

The biggest problem is that with no green on the ground and a very rainy year, any good soil I had has all eroded to some other area. It’s not so much a problem that we have had a lot of rain as it is that when it rained, the rainfall was fierce and excessive — like an inch or two in an hour. Or 4-6 inches in an afternoon. It rained so hard sometimes that the rain built up backwards on my roof and found places to leak into the house that it would not have found otherwise.

However, I do not want to complain too much. For 6 years, we experienced drought. I worried so much for the trees during that time(I live in a rural woodsy area).

I want to look at that straw-like stuff you roll out to hold seed. If I can make that work, I can maybe recycle the hay from the dog houses to the yard and maybe gain a grassy yard in the process. Maybe spread some new dirt down mixed with the hay and grass seed.

Sprinklers are out. The dogs think those things are GREAT FUN! Their favorite is the one that sprays around in a circle, then once it completes one circle, goes quickly backwards to the start of the circle. All these are good for is making a very muddy circle of paw prints. Realkly screws up the yard.

I also need to find some scent that dogs hate. I could mix that in or spray it on so the dogs would leave the area alone.

I know there has to be way…