I Fought the Lawn, and the Lawn Won
Every year, most of us look outside our homes, and agree to a challenge. The challenge of making our lawn the greenest, healthiest, weed-free place it can be.
It’s a stupid promise to ourselves. It never works out. Just like the beginning of the school year, we realize our goals are far too lofty about 2 weeks in, and give up.
By the end of the summer we don’t want to pay the water bill to have it watered as much as is needed to keep it green, nor do we want to spend any of the free time we do have in summer arched on all 4’s trying untangle the weeds from the precious bit of lawn we DO want to keep. If your back isn’t sore from spending ours hunched over, it’s sore from the sunburn you’ve gotten.
This year, I devoted 3 weeks to the health of my lawn. Did it at the right time too. At least, if you read the book I did on “lawn care”. I focused heavily on my lawn for 3 weeks at the End of May, beginning of June, apparently, the most PIVOTAL time of year for your lawn (see, it turns out gardening books are a lot like parenting books. Every one of them has a different philosophy, and the one you’re following is entirely wrong). I over seedied, arrogated, fertilized…It hasn’t worked. My lawn is worse this year then it has ANY other year I’ve tried.
ONE method of “de-weeding” says that if you mow often, and don’t cut the lawn too short, you’ll eventually strangle out the weeds. The theory being that grass is stronger than weeds, and if it’s given the time to grow, it will take up the space of the weeds. I think my problem is that my grass was too greatly outnumbered, and the weeds made like a 35 year old, unemployed son. Just didn’t move, and started moving their stuff into any extra space they could.
I’ve read one article that says we have trained our lawn to grow with help from pesticides, but now that London is pesticide free, expect 10 years of weeds to grow in before the lawn is strong enough to grow without help. I’m willing to accept 10 years of weeded, ugly lawns, but not my neighbours looks because I’ve depreciated their home value with my ugly yard.
It’s gotten to the point that I’m trying to adopt a more passive approach. Accepting that there are weeds but at least they are green. After I mow, from a distance, it looks like a nice lawn. But it eats at me. Gnaws at the back of my head, like in Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart. I know things aren’t right. Plus my wife says it makes us look like trash. In fairness, I think we look trashy more for the couch on our front lawn, rather than the lawn itself, but what do I know about class?
Greenies encourage you to let the weeds grow, and let your grass turn brown. The environmentally friendly thing is to not let anything grow in a habitat that doesn’t naturally grow there. Because your lawn needs water, it doesn’t naturally grow there. We should be investing in stones, and pebbles to turn our yards in to stone gardens and such (expect your insurance to rise if this is the case…playing with your toddler on your front yard is now a liability).
That having been said, It’s a sickness, like golf. Even though most of us are terrible at it, we’re still going to try next year. And maybe even invest heavily in the attempt.
We’re afraid to ask the one neighbour that has a nice lawn how he did it, so we’re doomed for years of trial and error. We don’t want to admit that we don’t know what we’re doing.
Now the bright side of it all is that if you are looking for a cheap way to put in an afternoon, and a reason to sit out in the sun, you can have HOURS of time spent on all fours, ensuring a sour back the next day…just pulling out weeds in your lawn.
Or skip the manual labour side of it, and just spend the same amount of time in the sun, with a beer, reading the infinite amount of theories of getting rid of your weeds without pesticides.
You’ll be the best read person on your street with weeds taking over your lawn.
