I’m No Lawn Nut, But…
October 22nd, 2019
I’ve always thought that people lean too heavily on lawns, mainly because it’s the default choice when 1.) they can’t think of anything better to do with the space, or 2.) they’d rather not invest in the work and expense to do something else.
I didn’t think I’d ever be a riding-mower guy, but here I am.
I have nothing against lawns, but unless we really want/need all of that green for play space or entertaining, there are better options (growing food, planting trees for shade, planting rain gardens to capture storm runoff, planting flowers for beauty and pollinators, etc.)
That’s why the lawn in my Cumberland County yard served mainly as pathways through the garden beds.
Now that my wife and I moved to the Pittsburgh area, we inherited an ocean of grass out front.
We’re on a corner lot with the house atop a hill, so most of the lawn is on a slope. (Everything in Pittsburgh is on a slope… or cliff.)
The magnitude of this space forced me and my rapidly aging legs to invest in a riding mower.
That’s right. I’m now a lawn guy.
If I were 35 or 40, I’d be digging up big chunks of the green to plant a Pittsburgh version of the Weigel Botanic Garden.
It’d be glorious… curving beds of shrubs and massed perennials, specimen trees, maybe a rock garden, a collection of spring bulbs, pockets of annual flowers, roses, and a dwarf conifer garden to make my wife happy.
Except for some trees and the dwarf conifer garden, that’s going to happen only in my imagination.
One problem is that I went and got old. At 63 years and counting fast, I could probably manage to create everything (with help from Mr. Ibuprofen). But a big question mark is how long I’d be able to maintain it.
A second problem is deer. The neighborhood’s four-legged, non-stop, eating machines would devour most plants as fast as I could plant them.
Read more on my new deer problem
Other than a Kousa dogwood and a few scrubby shrubs around the front foundation, the only plant I inherited in the quarter-acre grassed front yard was a half-dead blue spruce, which I just had cut down.
I hate to whack trees, but this spruce had needlecast and was bare halfway up. The remaining branches were exhibiting the tell-tale needlecast sign of heavy browning with live blue growth only at the tips.
Since a 10-foot-wide area already was grassless around the removed spruce, I replanted with a black gum ‘Wildfire’ (a native mid-sized tree with rich maroon fall foliage) and a trio of dwarf goldthread falsecypress. I finished off the bed with two triangles of ‘Caradonna’ salvia and a groundcover planting of ‘Angelina’ creeping sedum.
I’ve also added a young dawn redwood (I now have space for this eventual giant) and a weeping purple beech ‘Purple Fountain.’
I’m thinking of a magnolia for the front yard next spring.
Come spring, I plan to plant a Bracken’s Brown Beauty magnolia and a pair of American fringe trees – one centered out each of the front windows.
Even with those spots of color and bigger life, I still have a lot of lawn.
It’s too much to mow with a basic gas-powered push mower like I’ve always used. I tried. Then I huffed and puffed my way to the tractor dealer, where I bought a Husqvarna riding mower with a 42-inch cut.
I never thought I’d be a riding-mower guy, but here I am. It gets the job done in a quarter of the time vs. pushing. And it’s much easier on old legs.
The other challenge I face is converting the lawn from the high-input money hog that it’s been.
Past owners used lawn-care companies to fertilize and control weeds and bugs. The place came with an irrigation system, too.
My former house had a well – and a good one at that. We had no water bill. After seeing how expensive public water is out here, irrigating the lawn is out of the question… not that I was planning to use the sprinkler system anyway.
Babying the lawn with irrigation and regular chemical fertilizer translates into shallower roots and a lawn that becomes dependent on these highfalutin inputs. In other words, it doesn’t have to work very hard to get what it needs.
Lawns can go downhill fast when you suddenly take away the coddling.
Grass does reasonably well with less care, but it takes time to adapt to tougher love. Take away the coddling, and the lawn protests with thinning, an infestation of weeds and crabgrass, and greater likelihood of disease.
That’s what I’ve faced this summer as I didn’t irrigate, didn’t put down crabgrass preventer, didn’t apply grub preventer, didn’t do weed-and-feed, and fertilized only twice with organic products instead of a four- or five-step chemical plan.
It doesn’t help that the soil underneath is a dreadful, compacted clay that has the sponginess of concrete after just two or three days without rain.
I’m mowing high, letting the grass clips lay, adding decent-quality grass seed, and pulling/digging weeds and crabgrass along with spot-spraying to knock down a widespread outbreak of nutsedge.
Once I build a compost bin and get the black gold that results, I’ll begin top-dressing with it. That made a huge difference over the years in my Hampden Twp. yard, but the smaller turf area made that job much more doable.
My goal here is to give the lawn only what it really needs to do reasonably well.
As the sort of corner “gatekeeper” for the neighborhood, I don’t want to just mow and end up with more weeds than grass in a few years. But I don’t need a weed-free green carpet either.
I’m shooting for what former Victory Garden host Roger Swain calls “good-enough grass.”
This lawn is going to have to learn to get by on less.
Will you mow your grass higher or lower for the winter?
I meant to tell you about what I did to manage the clay soil that I found when we built a new house 24 years ago, but I was simply too busy working outside with good soil and flourishing weeds this summer. We moved from Marietta with beautiful rich river soil to former rocky farmland with miserable red clay. Just digging a hole for one small perennial was almost impossible that summer. I read about garden gypsum and peat moss as additives, so started mixing the gypsum and peat moss with the miserable clay as I planted. In a year or two, the areas where I planted were thriving and earthworm abundant. A few years ago I discovered 25 pound bags of another type of gypsum for lawns so I now use that when planting in soil that had not been disturbed. My husband used this type of gypsum in areas of the lawn that were doing poorly and results were amazing. We have a well, so we installed 4 rain barrels to capture water for plants.
As for the deer problem (we have a partially wooded property) I tried all sorts of sprays, etc. and the varmints kept ruining small seedlings. However, I had a dog groomer friend who kindly donated unwashed hair from her clients dogs. They happened to be white in color, and my tiny evergreen seedlings looked snow covered all year, but it worked to keep the deer from ruining them. For desiduous trees, I use small circular fences made of chicken wire that is at least 3-4′ high. I tie colored plastic ribbons on the wire to flap around. Don’t know if the ribbons help, but I figure the deer will be deterred slightly. I keep the fencing around the trees until they are “adult” size and not eaten or rubbed by the deer. The unwashed dog hair seems to keep a scent that deters the deer from killing my trees. I have always had a dog or two and possibly daytime deer activity is helped with the dogs barking. However, the deer are usually out when we are sleeping so I am convinced the dog hair was what really helped with the problem.
Good luck with the deer and soil issues. As for the hills of Pittsburgh, I lived there during junior and senior high school, walked 1.9 miles to school (only had buses for 2 mile away kids) on those hills. Kept me in great physical shape although I didn’t know it at the time. Pittsburgh is a great city with very friendly people.
Linda,
Thanks for the tips and experienced insights. Gypsum is a good product for clay-busting, but I’ve been leaning on the less expensive bulk loads of leaf compost from the borough and peat moss. Also some bags of mushroom compost. All the lugging and digging and mixing is hard work, but you’re right that the soil work makes a big difference.
I might have to give the dog-hair trick a try if the deer decide to get hungry enough to go after my so-far deer-repulsive plant varieties that are outside my fence.
Glenn,
I’ll move the blades lower heading into winter. I usually step down once from the highest setting around this time of year (late October) and then go down to about 2 inches for the last cut of the year. The lower cut reduces the incidence of snow mold coming out of winter.
Hi George - you got 5 years on me, so I understand thinking about the next 25 years and the amount of labor that will be involved to maintain the landscaping without living on pain relievers…Your property and house look awesome, and planting trees and shrubs like you seem to be doing should turn out pretty sweet. Those trees in the background near your house look great.
Thanks, Frank. I’m slowly making the change from jungle to landscape.
I wish you luck with your lawn. I never used to care years ago when my dad did all the fretting about the grass, which was a well established mess when we moved into the house. Since he’s been gone, it’s my problem and after trying everything from chemical to organic to prayer, I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s a crap-shoot solely dependent on the weather.
Some years when I haven’t even fertilized but we have enough rain and no drawn-out heat wave in summer, it looks like a golf course. Other years (like this one), I’ve gone the chemical route but due to the miserable drought and heat just passed, half the grass is dead.
I also have the added problem of fungus that developed last fall when it was constantly wet and I’ve heard that you’re pretty well doomed as far as fighting that. However, you have a green thumb and hopefully better weather than Mechanicsburg, so I’m sure your lawn will adjust to your program of tough love and look great by next spring.
Becky,
Yeah, growing a good lawn isn’t as easy as it sounds. A lot can go wrong. And the weather in Pittsburgh, I’ve found, can be just as dreadful and “challenging” at times as Mechanicsburg. But at least I don’t have black flies biting my ears and flying in my eyes while I try to cut the grass.
Hi George,
Wow, you’ve got the right ideas, for sure. Being on the corner also allows you to be the live demonstration of ideas other than large lawns. I think the main reason for large lawns is you can pull it off with only the knowledge required to pull the cord and start the mower. Many folks are afraid to plant something and have it die. It’s understandable. And, they mistakenly believe it costs much more to plant trees, shrubs and perennials. More knowledge but not more money, over time. But the basics are easy. One of my new neighbors proclaimed, as he walked by, “Well, now you’ve got yourself a full time job!” But, just a minute Sherlock!
I happily reduced my front lawn mowing from 40 minutes to 18. Switching to Oxford Hard Fescue next year will further reduce mowing and watering. My trees and shrubs will all be low maintenance requiring at most an annual selective pruning. I’m targeting a couple hours/week maintenance, or less - total. Pollinator garden feeding butterflies, bees and birds, shade/shelter from Black Gum, Serviceberries, Crabapple and our giant Willow Oak. Oak Leaf Hydrangea and other flowering shrubs. Life is always better surrounded by nature’s beauty.
Full time job indeed. Rather, full time satisfaction, full time beauty and full time enjoyment.
Thanks for the inspiration you provide.
Jim
Jim,
Agreed on all fronts. Lawns chew up more time and money than people think. Most tend to under-estimate that input and over-estimate how much a well-thought-out, plant-rich landscape will cost. That’s not even counting the value of enjoyment of the diverse beauty.