The man who does my gutters also aerates lawns. My front yard has been almost
taken over by creeping charlie (ground ivy). He thinks that if he aerates and
puts in a lot of grass seed that we can bring back the grass in a couple years.

What do you think? What kind of grass seed should we use?

Marilyn

Blue fescue, perennial rye, Kentucky bluegrass. Any cool season grass is good.
After you aerate, I suggest top dressing with a quarter inch of compost, then
overseeding. It is too late to do that now in your area.


On 11 Nov 2003 13:55:20 GMT, (Allview) opined:

The man who does my gutters also aerates lawns. My front yard has been almost
taken over by creeping charlie (ground ivy). He thinks that if he aerates and
puts in a lot of grass seed that we can bring back the grass in a couple years.

What do you think? What kind of grass seed should we use?

Marilyn

"Allview" wrote in message
...
The man who does my gutters also aerates lawns. My front yard has been
almost
taken over by creeping charlie (ground ivy). He thinks that if he aerates
and
puts in a lot of grass seed that we can bring back the grass in a couple
years.

What do you think? What kind of grass seed should we use?

The petite fescues seem to work best for me in Cincinnati. They stay green
and require little water in the heat of summer. I didn't water at all this
year. I have also drastically cut back on the application of fertilizer.

I don't know if you can successfully chock-out the creeping Charlie. You
might need to eliminate the lawn and start over next year.

The man who does my gutters also aerates lawns. My front yard has been
almost
taken over by creeping charlie (ground ivy). He thinks that if he aerates
and
puts in a lot of grass seed that we can bring back the grass in a couple
years.

What do you think? What kind of grass seed should we use?

Marilyn,

Fescue mixes will do best for you. I used a mix to revitalize our lawn
space this year as well. FWIW, it's getting a bit late to be planting grass
in our area though -- cold weather is starting to settle in so I'd probably
be more optimistic for a re-seeding in the spring.

Now the ground ivy/vines (have you positively ID'd it as Creeping Charlie?)
is another story. A good description comes from
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/greenline/02v4/02.html :

"Creeping Charlie or ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) is a perennial weed
that spreads by seeds, rhizomes and creeping stems that root at the nodes.
The leaves are round or kidney-shaped, bright green, hairy and opposite with
scalloped leaf edges. The flowers are small, purplish blue and
funnel-shaped. It is a type of mint, so it has square (four-sided) stems;
and when the plant is crushed, a strong mint-like odor is emitted."

Aerating and then seeding is not going to knock that out if it's all but
taken over. If your yard is primarily covered with this, then I'd wait
until spring, hit it with RoundUp, then break the soil, aerate, and re-seed
altogether. (A broadleaf pesticide will help as well.) Anything else would
just be a precursor to failure. You can try pulling it out, but be sure to
get as much of the root system as possible since it uses rhizomes to spread.
A weed-pulling party would probably be more expensive than RoundUp (pizza
and beer) but that combined with aeration and overseeding may do the trick.
Grin You may also want to take a look at drainage -- Charlie likes it
moist so you might need to adjust drainage a bit to make it more friendly to
lawn and less so for him.

James

Thank you. I have a large bag of mushroom compost he could put down before
seeding. This is just a front yard on the south side.

The price is low so I'm going to try it. He says he did it 2 years in a row on
his yard and it looks good. Earlier next year.

I don't know what the weather will be like but sometimes we don't even have any
snow until after Christmas. I should have the whole yard replaced but I'm
doing so many other expensive things to this house now.

Marilyn