31 new of 172 responses total.
Every five years or so I trim the sod that grows onto the sidewalk with my spade. I found that these trimming make *great* sod to patch barren spots in the yard. I just lay them in the bare spot, soak them with water and walk on them, while soaking wet, to make sure they are in intimate contact with the barren soil. Doing this is important as otherwise the sod will dry out easier. Ants and centipedes can be a health hazard? How so?
They bite.
Centipedes bite? OK. So do dogs, cats, mice, hamsters, some large carnivores pet fish, snakes, spiders, etc.
Oh, you mean the Nashunal Zoo?
All I know is the guys come and spray some stuff and leave little signs warning people not to even go near the grass, much less walk on it, and it's green and lush all summer long, and I give lots of money to the various "green" people when they come around.
We don't keep any indoor animals that bite loose. Ants and centipedes would be OK if they agreed not to bite, or stayed in their cages. Our spiders don't bite, so we don't do anything about them.
Re #144: Also professional boxers.
ROTFL!!
We don't keep those.
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Sure - but the curator is away at camp for two weeks.
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Spring is here with a vengeance, so it's time to revive this item. Haven't done much to the lawn yet this year, except to mow it once or twice. Everything's growing at a great rate, including the weeds. Dandelions have made substantial inroads, so I'm afraid I'll have to zap 'em with weed&feed. In general I don't like to use herbicides, but one application every couple of years seems to keep things well enough under control. The dandelions are having a field day all over town. I blame El Nino.
I've already mowed 3 times. And I'll have to do something about the dandelions, next year.
Gave the lawn the weed & feed treatment. The weeds are under reasonable control. No more herbicide treatement is planned for the rest of the season. The grass is growing at such a rate that I have to mow it every three days just to keep up. Because of the early fertilization, I'm postpoing the Grandma Putt treatment for a bit. Plan to do it at the end of May.
Hm, here it is Memorial Day. If the weather stays dry today, I'll mow the lawn, do the Grandma Putt treatment, and throw on a little Milorganite for good measure.
Oh, great. Our very own chunk of radioactive intoxicated green space. ;-)
Hey, if one bag spread out over the entire lawn is going to cause a radioactivity problem, then I pity the poor folks who work at Franks. They've got bags and bags of Milorganite piled high and deep there...
Well the lawn has been Milorganited -- it required two bags, not one -- and given the Grandma Putt Spring Lawn Tonic as well. The exact recipe was given earlier in this item, but in brief, the lawn tonic consists of ammonia, beer, listerine, epsom salts, and dish soap mixed together and applied to the lawn with a hose-end sprayer. Yummy!
The 1999 lawn care season has begun. Time to revive this item. Only thing I've done so far this season is apply some fertilizer containing crabgrass preventer. That plus all of our rain and mild temperatures have caused the grass to green up nicely and grow like crazy. It could really use a mowing.
Our grass (and weeds) definitely need mowing, but it's way too wet to mow, alas. We have a low spot in the yard that is acting like a miniature swamp right now. Should dry up by tomorrow, though, so maybe we will mow then.
Wow, I've noticed lots of grub damage this spring. How did you guys fare?
Yes, there has been a lot of grub damage this spring. My parents thought the crows were doing it by pulling out the grass in their yard but I showed them the grubs and told them the crows were going after them. We had a smallish invasion in the strip between the curb and sidewalk. The kids and I raked through it with small gardening tools and found several hundred grubs. Do these things multiply or is it just part of the life-cycle for some insect? I imaging some insect lays the eggs and this year a lot of the hatchings survived.
No, grubs don't "multiply". I think most are beetle larvae - June Beetles, perhaps.
Re resp:162 - Although the grass was a bit damp, last Wednesday I decided the front lawn was getting just too shaggy and mowed it anyway. And now it needs another. Is there no end to this madness? Speaking of madness, it will soon be time to give the lawn its spring Grandma Putt treatment. See resp:0 for the recipe.
You could rip out the lawn and plant low-maintenance groundcovers. That would end the madness. What does grub damage look like? I don't know if we have any. I did find a grub when I was weeding my perennial border (and squished it with my shovel). Most lawn grubs are the larvae of japanese beetles. They can be controlled with applications of milky spore disease (I believe it's some kind of bacterium or other organism that kills the grubs, but doesn't harm earthworms and other good bugs).
We are fortunate not to have a problem with grubs. They don't seem to like the radioactivity from the Melorganite. What a relief, eh? ;-)
(Reports of radioactivity in our lawn are greatly exaggerated... ;-)
(Do you know that for a fact?)
I would like to announce that in just a couple of weeks we will be moving out of our house and into a condominium, where Big Brother (aka the "condo- minium association") does all the lawn care. I have mowed my last lawn. It's over, finnissimo, done. You may express your congratulations or condolances, whichever seems appropriate. Actually, I'm quite happy about the change. But, obviously, I will have little more to say about lawn care.
So what will you do with your special lawn elixir? Bottle it and sell it for sexual disfunction?
You have several choices: