“My lawn needs complete transformation, I don’t think I can wait till I see how it will look like,” a young lady told me while glancing over a landscaping book. She was so excited looking for ads, deciding what to choose but she ended up smiling, “I think I should take sods instead”. I gave back a friendly smile and continued picking up story books for my kids.
I came home thinking about the lady as I remember my grandfather (he passed away several years ago), a green thumb one, sharing his experimentations when I was teenager. He used to share his secrets on maintaining a beautiful yard, combining it with a great lawn where my cousins and I used to play when we were just 5 or 6 years old. We loved rolling over the green grass, not knowing that it takes a lot of patience to come up with a beautiful lawn.
Grandfather told us that it took time to create such beautiful patios, from walks through the lawn. Building up his patio with logs and few bricks, grass and flowering plants sprouts side by side. Walking down from the patio you will find a fine lawn on the other half of the open area of about hundred square meters. He told us, that through the years he learned to maintain a green lawn regardless of the weather. Using grass seeds of different blends, he mastered with his rake and shovel, how to grow the mighty grass.
Then I learned that a grass seed is not just one kind of seed. It grows on different varieties giving different resistance of the weather. Take the Buffalo seeds combined with some Fescue seeds, you can take advantage of their strengths on different season. Buffalo seed’s strength on warm season, it needs not too much water while the Fescue seed’s strength is during the cold season.
But there were times when grasses grow old like some of us growing old having gray hair, grandfather sometimes fertilizes the soils, gave time to patch those brown spots (destroyed by the pets or us kids playing too much on the lawn). Sometimes he uses some blend of Bermuda grass or ryegrasses, or Kentucky Bluegrass (tough grass with great resistance from heavy foot traffic).
Carefully removing weeds from other plants and some dried leaves before planting these wonderful grass seeds are some of grandfather’s secret of growing grass lawn very finely. Now, for me I’ll grow my lawn just like my grandfather did. I will not prefer those sods, plugs or sprigs of grass. It’s the love of patience over nature that will keep the grass grow stronger throughout any season. Sod’s cost is a lot higher, much of its labor needs muscles to bring along and lay over the yard. Sod’s endurance to temperature is not assured as well as the grass blend. Grannies are really great! They made our life lighter with their stories.