GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

06-04-2004, 08:52 PM

(Josiane) said:

We have invested in Chemlawn several times but the weeds have
always come back.

Chemlawn is a process, you need to keep it up to get the benefits from
it. We used to use Truegreen (Chemlawn) and our grass was beautiful and
weed free.

The soil is dry, claylike and rocky

Sounds like fill dirt instead of topsoil (new neighborhood?).

was careful to water the seed and I'm not sure why it didn't grow.

The dirt is lifeless. What you do depends on your budget and level of
sweat equity you want to invest. You could bring in topsoil. You could
just put down sod which should cure the topsoil problem. You could till
up the soil and add amendments such as sand and compost. I would just
lay sod and then continue the Chemlawn treatments.

My
biggest suspicion is that it all started with me cutting the lawn too
short, which I'm told weakens the grass and makes it vulnerable to
weeds.

I don't know if that started your problem, but it definitely won't help.
We mow our grass high and have green grass year round. All our neighbors
mow their grass as short as possible and have green grass during the
spring and fall, the rest of the year they have brown dead grass. In the
past we used Truegreen (Chemlawn), but now do our own lawn care
(although I don't think it's any cheaper).

I've noticed that the only lawns in our neighborhood that look nice
are the sodded ones.

Probably because there is no topsoil. Many new neighborhoods here are
backfilled with fill dirt which cannot support most plants.
--
McQualude