Planting Grass

[crokett™]

kill all the grass, let the weeds grow, tell your neighbors your going for the natural yard look.

thats more or less what Im doing now.  I don't have any neighbors who would complain.  It's my wife who is complaining.

[Snipe Hunter]

For 5 years I've been trying to grow grass in my yard. After doing a lot of reading, I came to the conclusion that my soil was crap. I have crappy soil and a lot of shade. Before I tried again to grow grass, I decided to fix the soil. Weeds do great in bad soil, not so well in soil conducive to healthy grass. Bad soil, whether it be sandy or clay lacks nutrients, is compresses and poorly aerated. Fertilizer is only a short term boost for healthy grass but it won't promote root growth like healthy soil will.

To fix the soil, I spread  Love Your Soil last fall. Then put down seed and covered the seed with about 1/2 -1" of leaf compost (LeafGrow). The LeafGrow acts like fertilizer but only lasts about 6 months before it's gone. It also retains moisture so you don't have to go nuts watering a new lawn. It also portects the seed like straw would.By by that time, the Love Your Soil should have had an effect on the soil to stimulate root growth and aerate the soil. Once the grass was established in the spring I hit it with Weed and Feed. About 3 weeks ago I spread spread Love Your Soil again. I'll have to do Love Your Soil twice a year in the spring and fall. I used the back yard with the most shade as a test area. I'll do the front yard next spring, we're having an addition done and I don't think it's worth trying if construction is going on .

Before and after pics

[crokett™]

Neil, if I wanted to try again for grass this fall, when should I spread the love your soil? does it matter? does it need to be worked in?

[Snipe Hunter]

Neil, if I wanted to try again for grass this fall, when should I spread the love your soil?  does it matter?  does it need to be worked in?

As soon as you can. Water it in or do it right before a rain.

sooo, now

[oscarMadison]

try spearmint.  Tell her you're getting into spearmint teas, that you heard it helps reduce stress and insomnia.  Plus she can use when she makes you some cookies.  I've got a couple of bed type areas that the previous owner created.  They went to weed.   Planted spearmint and it choked out the weeds.  I'm guessing the only problem would be containing it to your yard.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/spearmint

I probably wouldn't stress the facial hair thing. All joking aside it does look nice, is easy to grow and if you brush the top of the plants with a broom you can smell spearmint. It creates a see of green.

[nervioral]

I definitely don't recommend using chemicals and sprays. It can negatively affect your plants' growth. Using high-quality seeds is a far better option. Anyway, my grandpa prefers pulling weed manually with no tools. It takes some time to clear it away, but the advantage of this method is obvious. At the same time, my best friend uses various handheld weed removal tools, which significantly speed up the process. You can watch a review about these tools at https://www.growgardener.com/best-weed-puller/ where the author gives a detailed description of them. I think that the GladiatorWeeder is the best tool on the list, IMHO.

[fixtureman]

I used a brand of weed vegetation killer called Barrier spray once and no groth for 3 years