The war with my lawn has resumed with the arrival of weather warm enough to stay outside for more than an hour without various extremeties changing color on me. I was out there all weekend, and discovered that, for each separate area of my lawn, there are different issues. I’m pretty much at a loss, and am considering Zoysia grass as “the final solution”.
When I bought this house last year, it had some bare spots in the lawn from heavy machinery which had to come up on the lawn to remove an old, unused septic tank. I’ve been unable to get much to grow in that area at all. I put down some seed again this year, along with Scott’s “Step 1 for seeding” fertilizer, and so far, “I got nuthin'”. I’ll give it another couple of weeks I guess, and then it’ll be time to borrow that tiller my neighbor offered earlier in the year.
The one thing that all areas of my lawn have is moss. Lots of moss. It’s freakin’ everywhere. Depending on the area of the lawn, it’s due to clay soil, poor drainage, no sun, or a combination. The largest areas have poor drainage, and I have a plan for that:
I have well water. I also have a pool, which isn’t open yet, and the pool cover has hundreds of gallons of water on it. So I hooked a pool cover pump up to a (very long) garden hose, and now I can water the lawn without depleting the water supply to the house. This sparked the idea in my head to just start harvesting rainwater from my roof, and it turns out this is something people do, so I’m looking into getting some rain barrells now. It’ll serve the dual roles of keeping the lawn a little more dry; allowing me to irrigate where I want with my pump method; and I can also use that water to help keep my pool filled in the summer without using the house supply.
Wish me luck!