[Vision2020] Killing grass

[Ken]

On Thursday 14 June 2007 20:45, TIM RIGSBY wrote:
> Visionaries:I recently purchased a house in Boise and am very ambitious
> about yard work and such.

It's great that you're ambitious about yard work because growing a new yard 
from seed is a lot of gardening work.

> Anyway my yard consists of mostly weeds with very little grass.

The fact that there is little grass, especially of a type that you don't 
want, may be an advantage because there will be less of it to remove. Of 
course, you will need to remove, not kill, but remove the weeds as well as 
any unwanted types of grass. This means digging up the weed with a cluster 
of soil around the weed's root structure, squeezing and shaking loose the 
soil around the roots back down to the ground, then tossing the weed and 
its (mostly) soilless roots into a garden cart or garden tractor trailer to 
be hauled away.

If digging up unwanted weeds, thistles, quack grass, and other oddments 
sounds like a lot of work, it is. The point is that these items may not be 
killed in situ and leave an environment that is well-suited for subsequent 
plant life.

> Also the grade is horrible especially when I flood irrigate,

Most grades are relatively constant; if yours is variable during irrigation, 
it may be quite interesting.

> it flows towards my house (not good). 

One assumes that the grade does not flow toward your house, but rather the 
flooding irrigation water flows houseward. Does this mean that if you 
forget to turn off the irrigation water that your basement floods?

Did the sellers of the house know this before the sale? Did you?

> Anyway, I want to kill everything,

One hopes this is an overstatement, even with respect to a residential lawn. 
Surely in the four decades since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring some greater 
awareness of chemicals in the environment has infused into home gardening. 

> rototill, set grade, fine grade, install sprinklers, and drill seed.

Perhaps in the course of doing substantial landscaping it will occur to just 
remove the layer of topsoil containing the weeds and unacceptable lawn, 
install a watering system, add new topsoil suitable for the new lawn, and 
then seed the new topsoil. The topsoil may have had appropriate fertilizers 
added to it before it is spread over the watering system, giving the new 
seed a better base from which to germinate and grow.

> However, I don't want to use harsh chemicals to kill and I am not patient 
> enough to let it die on its own.
<snip remainder>

If your level of patience is insufficient to do the manual labor of removing 
weeds and their root systems, then either hiring others to do that work, or 
contracting with a landscaping firm to do work which will have the same 
effect, are the better choices to result in a better lawn with a less 
degraded lawn care and gardening environment.


Ken Marcy