Building the perfect lawn takes effort

By Bev Johnson | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, June 21, 2008

So you want a perfect lawn — a lawn with no weeds, no odd grasses or moss. If that's the case, get a job as a greens keeper as you will not live long enough to have that lawn in your yard.

A lawn that is all one species of grass is a disaster waiting to happen. A prolonged drought or wet spell may damage or kill such a lawn.

If you have a mix of grasses and small green plants at least some of them will survive bad weather.

You can improve your lawn, however. The most hated weeds in most lawns are dandelions and creeping charlie.

Let's start with the easiest — dandelions.

They are perennials, so the first thing you need to do is kill the plants in your yard with a broadleaf weed killer.

Be sure the container says it will kill dandelions.

Wait the specified times it is active before it gets rained on to treat the leftover seeds.

Dandelion seeds are viable even if the head you cut off was yellow.

Either a weed-and-feed, or better yet, corn gluten meal will prevent the seeds from germinating and re-coloring your grass yellow.

The nitrogen in either the weed-and-feed or corn gluten will encourage your grass to grow.

A topcoat of compost on your lawn will improve the soil making for a thicker lawn.

Don't kill the clover. It fixes nitrogen in the soil.

It’s free fertilizer. Also, it is an excellent ground cover.

If you have moss, enjoy it. Your soil in that area is too shaded and poor in fertility to grow good grass. It's green all summer and needs very minimal mowing.

Now to Charlie. He is a real monster.

Rake or pull out all of it you can, all summer long. Around Labor Day, spray him with Trimec.

Then spray him again once a week until it freezes hard. You will be dealing with him for several years.

Unfortunately, if your neighbors don't treat their dandelions or Charlie, you will get both of them back. Birds and wind tend to spread them quite nicely.

Finally, cut your grass tall, 2.5 to 3 inches high. It will shade out many annual weeds, and for heaven's sake, use sharp blades.

If your grass looks gray after cutting, you have not cut it, you have torn the leaves off.

Bad practice. Those torn blades will lose moisture much faster than a cut leaf.

Use a mulching blade if you can and leave the clipping on the lawn.

That is unless you have windrows of cut grass. Those you should pick up.

The moral of this story is, put up with a mixed lawn. Let your neighbor wear himself out attempting to have the perfect lawn, while you just enjoy yours.

Bev Johnson is a master gardener for West Otter Tail County.