I stopped writing about my fledgling lawn as the grip of winter ceased its growth. It’s been a long haul over the past 8 months since the first bits grass were planted. To recap, over two-thirds of the property that I garden was torn up last August when a new septic system was installed. The lawn was torn up, which over the years went from a Wimbledon-like monoculture supported by a lawn service and chemicals by the prior owner to a collection of greenery that was mowed and neglected by me. To me the purpose of a lawn is to stop erosion and support the occasional Wiffle Ball game that our family plays during the holidays. So unlike many of my fellow Americans (and neighbors) I do as little as possible to spruce up and maintain the lawn. I don’t fertilize it. I don’t water it. I let the clippings fly and decompose where they might. I mow the law with a Scott’s manual mower and behead recalcitrant blades with a hand sickle. And my wife and I have aggressively been shrinking the size of our lawn with flower beds, shrubbery, ferns and anything else that will take up space.
So rather than do the slavish thing and replant in rye or bluegrass (which require lots of water and chemical support to be healthy,) I figured that I would seed with grass (and other things) that would require little if any care. Throwing caution and seeds to the wind, I replanted with clover and five different varieties of fine fescue that grow slowly and need little human intervention. I then waited and worried.
Unlike rye, fescue grows deliberately and slowly with most of the grass showing growth of a little over 1 inch in a patchy fashion by the time it went dormant in November. Given the sloping topography of my land I was worried that it would not hold the soil and large rivulets would be gouged from the soil. But surprisingly, after three storms that each dumped between 6 and 10 inches of rain, there was little erosion. The tiny blades were holding the soil, which meets my first criterion for a lawn.
But there were a lot of bald spots so I decided in late March to mix 1 pound of clover seed with 40 pounds of play sand and broadcast it over the lawn to complement the fledgling grass. And with the rain and warmth of spring it started to grow as well as the grass I planted.
In some areas the lawn had become thick and lush. Erma Bombeck wrote a book called, “The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank,” which shows she knew nothing about grass or a septic tank. The reality is that the grass is always greener over the septic field, which is where my grass and clover was growing well.
By early May the lawn had become a quilt of a few stubborn dirt spots, tuffs of clover, thick and thin patches of fescue and crabgrass. Now I didn’t plant crabgrass. The birds and the wind did. For a while I didn’t care and had an attitude of noblesse oblige. A no-mow lawn is about not working (or caring) that much about a lawn. Let 1,000 weeds flourish. Who cares? Already some bugleweed had taken hold in areas as well as wild violets. Dandelions took their own place and the clover was spreading nicely. I also seeded some creeping thyme in my greenhouse and it should be ready for transplanting in another month or so around the lawn to take its place. I’m sure other things will emerge and I was looking forward to it.
After a few weeks, however, a certain cultivar of crabgrass became all too pervasive. Its presence started innocently with a few lean sentinels rearing their forms six to nine inches above the soil. No big deal. I grabbed my sickle and knocked them down in a few minutes. (Other crabgrass expressed itself by simply laying down. It could stay.)
But like the mythical beast Hydra of Lerna for every blade I cut, two or more sprouted up. And their growth seemed faster and more virulent than before. These lean sentinels became thick groupings. Taking my mower to these persistent intruders was a waste of time. This crabgrass adheres to the Taoist proverb, “To bend like the reed in the wind, that is the real strength.”
Now if I just let them go, they would change my no-mow lawn to a swinging-sickle one. So with few natural alternatives I’ve been pulling crabgrass. Every day. And it seems to be working. For now.
