Green Me Now

With fall being the ideal time for lawn planting, GreenRetros has commenced its low-maintenance lawn project. We are planting 1,000 square feet of Pearl’s Premium Ultra Low Maintenance lawn seed in perhaps the worst section of an otherwise typical Littleton, MA, yard: sun and shade, solid-grass and weeded areas, with the grass lush, thick and weed-free over the septic system. We have no sprinkler system and typically do not water.

Here’s the cost breakdown for the project:

Pearl’s Premium Planting Costs

5 lbs seed: $35.07

40 lbs pelletized lime: 4.99

1 bag lawn booster: 36.99

4 bags organic compost @ $7.99 each: 31.96

Core aerator 1-day rental: 61.63

TOTAL $170.64

As recommended by the seed’s inventor, Jackson Madnick, our first step was the severe cut of the existing vegetation using a dull blade (see “Grass Seed Trims Lawn Care,” August 19, 2009; archives). I lowered the deck of the old Troy-bilt walk-behind mower as far as it would go and began. The scarring cut, intended to stress the vegetation, was difficult work in places of the uneven patch. I cut it twice, in perpendicular directions starting in the middle and working my way out to hopefully make the raking a little easier.

The vegetation is now much shorter that the lawn’s usual height of about three inches, an easily identifiable square in the yard. Also identifiable was the Troy-bilt’s 26-inch blade, peeking out from beneath the mower’s deck after the bumpy cut sheared off the bolt that attaches the blade to the spindle. I was about done with the perpendicular cut anyway.

Next came the raking. It’s amazing how small a 1,000-quare-foot patch looks in the yard, but how long it takes to rake.

I skipped Madnick’s next step, which calls for spraying weed-infested areas with Phydura, an alternative to chemical weed killers. I couldn’t find Phydura, and my local garden shop hadn’t heard of it. The shop had also not heard of Pearl’s Premium.

Next I applied the lime via rotary spreader, one 40-lb bag for the 1,000 square feet.

Then it was time to aerate the soil, which had been compacted recently when we had a willow tree taken down. Madnick advises using a lawn-mower-engine-driven core aerator, which removes plugs from the soil rather than simply punching holes in it.

When I first decided to do this project, a major attraction was that the planting required none of the arduous rototilling required of previous lawn projects. The attraction lessened when I first saw the size of the core aerator at a rental shop and considered the effort required to put it in and get it out of the van. The attraction lessened even more when I actually did these things, and still more as I used the aerator, making perpendicular passes over the patch. Aerating is not so difficult; but the tight and frequent turns required in the 310 x 310-foot patch made me long for the tiller.

Madnick’s next step is addition of a microbial mix to the soil. He recommends Microbial Soil Conditioner made by Organica, which I could not find. What I used instead is another Organica product, called Lawn Booster, which is an 8-1-1 formulation that includes corn gluten meal, steamed bone meal, sulfate of potash, and beneficial soil bacteria. My local garden shop carries it. I applied the product by rotary spreader.

Next: add 1/8 inch to ¼ inch organic compost. I had no idea how much of the Fafard organic shrimp and seaweed compost—which comes in somewhat damp, often leaky, and eyebrow-raising odiferous 30-dry-quart bags—to buy. But at $8 per bag, I decided to splurge and bought four—not even close to being enough. Twelve to 16 bags would have been more like it. I opened the bags and dumped them at four spots in the patch, equidistant from the center, and raked it in.

Then came the seeding, also done with the rotary spreader. I applied the 5-lb bag over the patch, as recommended, opting against the 7-1/2-lbs heavy-density seeding for a thicker lawn that helps out-compete weeds. I wanted to see how the lawn grew in at the normal recommended density, with the idea that I could overseed in the spring if needed.

I gave the seed a gentle rake into the soil, as recommended, with my usual surety that doing so would ruin the nice even distribution of seed that the spreader had made. Still I was determined to follow the directions.

The next step that Madnick recommends is rolling in the seeds for good soil contact. Lacking a roller, I enlisted teenagers for the job.

The final step is watering, which Madnick recommends be done every day that it doesn’t rain for 20 to 30 minutes (or to a depth of one inch) in the early morning. After 3 weeks, he says, cut back to watering every 2 days. For fall plantings, he says, you are done with watering after a month.

My sprinkler, it turns out, covers exactly 1,000 square feet.

We’ll watch for the seed to germinate and the grass to grow, and report more in a future issue.