When we first moved into our new house back in 2023 the front and back yards were a mess. There was no landscaping done and the builders has pretty much trashed anything that wasn’t part of the actual house itself. On top of that I was overextended financially and couldn’t really afford expensive landscaping - not even to pay for some basic turf to lay...so I decided to try and fix the lawns up myself. I have a fledgling green thumb and I’d had success in my old place getting the lawns in good shape so I thought I could curate this one. However, here I was starting with a basic wasteland but I thought to myself - ”How hard could it be?”
In the first year I was happy just to get some ground coverage so I wasn’t too fussed about what grasses were growing, as long as they were green. Last Spring the lawns started looking OK but I had a lot of clover and other weeds so I declared war on all that with some Kleen Lawn Selective Weed Killer. That campaign was a great success and the clover was annihilated along with a host of other weeds. Last Summer I had good grass coverage throughout most of the property and it looked good when it was freshly mowed, however the grasses were growing at different rates so after a while it looked patchy and a new enemy was emerging...
By the end of the Summer it became pretty clear that my next big problem was going to be Paspalum Grass. It was pretty much everywhere and it was seeding faster than I was mowing. At first I thought I could get another selective weed killer but I quickly found out that there wasn’t one for Paspalum (that worked). So I went nuclear. I carpet bombed a whole section of Paspalum in my front lawn with Glyphosate...and succeeded in killing just about everything in the area. My lawn looked like garbage again and continued to do so over the following Winter because everything stopped growing. Slaps forehead.
I had tried to seed the new wasteland I’d created with this Kikuyu Ryegrass Seed Blend where the Ryegrass is supposed to sprout up some ground cover while the Kikuyu establishes itself before then dying off. However, for whatever reason it was a near total failure. I suspect the soil was too hard (with lots of clay) and the seeds couldn’t take root consistently. Plus it was getting colder. So now that we’ve hit Spring again I’m digging in for a fresh war of attrition while I try to pull the Paspalum out by hand and power up the Kikuyu to fill the gaps.
It’s a massive job and it’s probably going to take me forever but I got 4 tonnes of topsoil delivered and spread it around so that the Kikuyu grass that I want can sprawl effectively. I’ve also put some soil aside so that I can fill the holes that are left when I dig out the Paspalum and I’ve started airdropping (transplanting) Kikuyu Rhizomes (pictured) into vacated spaces too. I’ve divided the property up into zones so that I can focus on each in turn and clear them methodically one at a time. It does feel like a military strategy in many ways and victory is by no means certain. This coming Summer offensive for my Lawn Wars is going to be pivotal...