Lawns Hub

Ok, enough of plastic. Even if you’re not happy with your live lawn, here’s some advice on how to fix some problems.

Sometimes stuff happens. A car misses the driveway and scores a nice 6 foot divot in your nice green lawn.  A dog who used your lawn as an outdoor latrine has damaged it to an uncommon extent, making it look like a bombing run. You had a gas spill.  You overfertilized and scorched a huge patch.  What to do?

Generally, the essential rule of thumb is to “treat” any areas with a few essential principles:

Any contaminates, such as gasoline or diesel spills, weed killer accidents, dog urine spots and the like can go in two directions.  The less obnoxious, such as dog urine spots can simply be “leached” by applying a good amount of water to allow the nitrogen to percolate further own into the soil.  Other spots, like the gas or diesel spills may even require the removal of the contaminated soil.  In this, once a certain amount of soil is taken away, I still recommend a leaching process.  Diesel is “clingy”, greasy and has a tendency to stick to the small particles of earth and silt in the soil. It also leaches out slower than, say, gas or alcohol.  Likewise for weed killer combinations. Just the same, some leaching is good.

Once leached and the soil replaced, apply seed in the same manner you would a new lawn.  For small areas, the fact is, not a lot of work is actually required.  Remove a bit of dirt, grab some known clean dirt, pack it in and apply seed.

When replacing lawns grasses which died due to drought or to under watering from a once-defective irrigation system, toss down some rye grass, or Bermuda, depending in your climate, along with some basic structural grass and let it rip.

Plastic turf is an entirely new and actually promising technology, used for many more purposes than for merely erecting a lawn that doesn’t need mowing.  All the current “field turfs” which are all the rage in colleges, high schools and even pro sport stadiums are turning to this new technology with all its built in advantages. Having laid quite a few I can vouch for the fact that it is at least superior to the “:Astroturf” of old, with its unbelievably hard and injurious surface. Getting tackled on Astroturf was no picnic.

This topic in fact is worth an entire article, it has grown so much as an option. Nor are football and soccer fields the only places they can be installed. I installed a golf green for a local university a few years back which they still practice on.  And that was not the only “green” I installed, either.  We did a few for home owners as well.  It’s the same process as field turf which, ironically, is the same process as installing interlocking brick pavers, at least at its bottom.  A good base here is everything, just like all roads and driveways.

The greens plastic grass were sort of fascinating to make.  We would add sand at minute increments to effect the speed of the green.  Add a bit of sand, say an eigth or a quarter inch, suddenly it gets a bit faster.  The utility of such a thing is really effective in Portland, where I live, owing to the rains which are pretty constant during Winter.  Not a problem with the plastic turf!  Just grab a rain suit or an umbrella and putt away.

Anyway, knowing the options, including putting greens is a smart way to go for anyone considering plastic grass.

In case you were wondering why all the latest focus on organic, let’s talk some about lawn care products and the pollution they cause.

Lawn care products pollution includes an unfortunately vast number of things.  I often hesitate to list them owing to the numbers, but what I can do is provide some cautionary tales about being better with what we do use. In many ways, it also depends on where we live as to the effects we have on our fellow man.  Noise pollution, for example, is not an issue out on the farm or in remoter suburban areas.  Since we have now identified just about everything in the world we can think of as to how we contaminate our friends and enemies alike, sigh, I guess it is only fair to list 2 of them, to be fair and to give us things to consider.

The aforementioned “noise pollution” is a prime example.  It occurs in reality when we live packed together as we now do in so many cities and towns. There a few options at the moment that are currently popular for alternatives to lawns in the landscape and, in truth, I would hope that stays the case.  We can, however, mitigate it by choosing the correct times and days for the chore. Weekends, with the kids out playing a human noise fairly rampant, is a great time. Mornings, after allowing a civil wakeup time is good as well.  In the end, we want most to not offend.  This rule as a social construct is a civilized way to approach it all.

Another overlooked method of polluting is with our forced air blowers. These handy items allow us to clean up rapidly and throughly without the hand work of using brooms.  But we overuse them.  Also, there are electric alternatives which mitigate the use of gas powered ones, as well.  These run quieter and sometimes without the unnecessary force of many of the gas powered varieties. One of the most unfortunate byproducts of using blowers, and especially the powerful ones, is in the spread and pulverization of dust.  We blow micro organisms all over the place with these monster power blowers, including allergenic bacteria and unwanted seeds.  A good rule of thumb in using blowers is to use the minimal amount of power as is necessary.