Translated material
Grass near the house
This is said for the sake of a nice word. Yes, you really can’t do without cutting: waist-deep grass is no longer a lawn, but a meadow or prairie, where bison belong! But among herbs there are no long-livers that can grow in one place for a whole century. Their life limit is 10–15 years, while the majority are given an even shorter term of 5–6 years. So keep in mind that you are not making a lawn to last forever, and even with ideal care, after ten years the initially sown grass will degenerate and will require major alterations, soil renewal, and reseeding. There is a lot of work and fuss, but, as they say, beauty requires sacrifice.
However, there are also completely unnecessary sacrifices. There is a type of lawn that is still unknown in Europe, I call it the “Moscow-Tajik lawn.” Every year utility workers try to build these in the vicinity of my house and throughout the capital. A dump truck, fueled with Caterpillar oil, arrives, a pile of peat is dumped onto the dead, dead clay of the yard... Then the hardworking children of the Asian semi-deserts rakes away the peat in a layer of five centimeters, scatter the seeds from the bag, slam them on top with a shovel... That's it! The lawn is ready in an hour. Sometimes grass even grows on it. But after six months, the same dead clay and ceramic tiles turn yellow. I suspect that these “lawns” are needed only so that management can report on improvements and migrant workers can feed themselves.
We will not follow such extremes.
Rule one: when starting a lawn, prepare the ground for it without fuss or haste
The soil must be fertile (it’s up to you how you achieve this - by mixing humus, compost, or black soil. Peat is not suitable - it has little nutrition); permeable (that is, it is easy for water to pass through) and loose to a depth of at least 20 cm - one and a half bayonets of a shovel (grass roots will develop in this layer); completely cleared of the presence of weeds, especially their rhizomes (they will kill the cultivated grass over time).
Rule two: do not chase imported mixtures of lawn grasses
The fact that it was produced in England (oh, the birthplace of the lawn!) or Germany does not guarantee anything. We have our own special climate, sometimes harsh. Perhaps seeds imported from Canada will also be suitable - the latitudes are approximately the same. But it is better to prefer domestically produced grass mixtures (according to the principle “where you were born, you come in handy”) - more and more of them are appearing on the markets.
The lawn is never sown with one type of grass, but mixtures of seeds of 3-5 different grasses are used - so that they compensate for each other’s shortcomings, insuring that if one type falls out of the grass stand, another will gain strength. The most commonly used in mixtures are meadow and common bluegrass, meadow and red fescue, common and white bentgrass, and perennial ryegrass.
Their different ratios in mixtures make it possible to sow different types of lawns - sports (especially resistant to trampling), formal (emerald grass, especially thick grass), everyday (you can walk, but it is not advisable to drive a tank).
Rule three: throughout the snowless summer season, the lawn must be looked after every week.
The grass is mowed for the first time when it grows above 15 cm, leaving 10 cm in height. Young grass does not need to be cut very low.
A “mature” lawn (in the 2nd, 3rd year of life) can be mowed once every two weeks and up to 5 cm.
Universal rule of care: mow, water, feed. It is better to feed with liquid fertilizers (for example, diluted mullein infusion).
Rule four: there is no place for football players, dogs, moles and ants on the front lawn
All of them are able to greatly spoil the work of your hands.
Dogs have a habit of not only digging up something, but also relieving themselves on the grass. Grass burned by dog urine usually does not recover. Anthills are controlled using chemicals. Moles are either repelled with special electronic devices or exterminated using mole traps installed in their tunnels. Unfortunately, there are no reliable means against football players. Maybe a red card...
Rule five: the lawn must not only be fed and watered, but also allowed to breathe!
On old lawns, the turf becomes so compact that the grass begins to literally suffocate. Through such “felt” little oxygen enters the soil. Methods of assistance: combing out dead grass with a rake and aerating the soil. For the latter, the entire surface of the lawn is pierced with a pitchfork (so-called slotting). Special attachments for shoes have also been invented - with spikes (see photo above). You trample on the lawn, make holes - you let oxygen into the roots. But the most convenient thing is a lawn mower equipped with a hammer-aerator: two operations are performed at once in one pass! True, such a device is not a cheap pleasure.