Re: converting lawn



On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Ryan Gyurkovitz wrote:

> You may want to continue covering the lawn patch by patch for now, but refrain
> from planting until fall, if you keep it watered most of the weeds will die for
> lack of sunlight and your yarrow won't have much competition when planting time
> comes around. I am using a variation of this to kill my front lawn, a 1 foot
> deep layer of mulch (nothing fancy, just the stuff the local tree service was
> going to take to the landfill) over the entire area, I have a bermudagrass lawn
> which is most likely tougher than any weed you will fight in your lawn.
> 
> Any other ideas?

I agree that you should wait until the fall rains, but I'd paper-and-mulch
now. Also, water and fertilize the achillea, to get as much growth as
possible, then take plugs or tear it to pieces for the fall palnting.
[If you do this, you can pull out any rhizomatous weeds that have gotten 
into the yarrow. It may be worth adding an inch or two of sand on the
surface... when moist, it will enhance the spread of the yarrow root
system.  You should be able to cover at least 10 times the area you have
now by division.

There are a couple of western natives that can be used for "dry lawns":
Antennarias or scabweeds - there are a lot of species -- are very flat
and silver.
They don't normally give complete cover in the poor soils ther  occur on
in nature, but luxuriate when given a little better deal in life, with a
little low-nitrogen fertilizer and one or two spring irrigations.

The second is "Oregon sunshine", Eriophyllum lanatum, which is present
through much of western North America.  There are a lot of local
variations in leaf dissection, but all are low-growing and very silvery,
with a long bloom of yellow flowers above the foliage. It very rapidly
spreads to make a weed-proof carpet, when given light soil and a little
fertilizer and water until established. A local business
put in two small lawns of this, and maintain it by string-trimming when
the flowers start to get ratty.

Antennarias can take foot traffic quite well, eriophyllum less so.

loren russell, corvallis, oregon, usa
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