Let's talk about lawns
IT WILL be quite a long story because I am still experimenting, and grass, in my experience, is not something that develops very quickly, especially when you want it to! So, there will be at least a couple of instalments describing my attempts at lawn development and growing grass over the coming months.
I did contemplate buying ‘fake grass’ bit like Donald Trump and his infatuation with fake news, except this grass is ‘real fake’ if there is such a thing! It reminded me of a book written many years ago by Terry Venables and Gordon Williams ‘They used to play on grass’. In the book, Venables describes growing grass and all the maintenance it requires. And then he compares it to artificial grass, which is hilarious.
But no, I wanted genuine grass, even though at the time I was planning my lawn, I didn’t own a lawnmower or even a pair of sheers!
In one of my earlier pieces, I wrote about how I had prepared the ground in anticipation of my vision of a long sweeping lawn around the side of my house with wide borders with lots of colourful flowers. Only to watch as it was washed away after I experienced my very first ‘gota fria’. Undaunted, I was going to have another go and, I thought I would start small and see how it developed. We have a picture of how it was at the very beginning and my first ‘lawn growing’ attempt.
The first picture was how it started in 2016 before we moved in, and the next pictures, taken in July 2017, are after the first rains and when I sectioned this part of the garden off with my own version of ‘stonewalling’ not sure what a professional ‘dry stone wall builder’ would think but I thought they were pretty good, albeit, as those readers may remember from the earlier article, it did take me a couple of attempts before the walls stopped sinking when it rained.
We can see how the first ‘lawn’ had developed by July 2017. It still looks a bit unkempt, but at least we can see grass growing. Nearly a year later, in March 2018, I had done a lot more work on what I was now referring to as the ‘bottom lawn’, and we can see the ‘middle lawn’ was, at last, starting to look like the semblance of a lawn. I will describe the top lawn in a later article. (I had a few problems with that, I can tell you, not least because of a blocked drain).
So, the bottom lawn was all set out and seeded, but I had two problems, the first was it grew very patchily, and the second, which was probably the cause of the erratic growth - ants, flipping hundreds of them. It was like I was feeding the whole ant population in La Drova. Would you believe I caught them stockpiling the seed ready to take into their nest, and some were big buggers not surprising I suppose, they had eaten their fill of my grass seed!
I had to take remedial action. I became the La Drova ‘ant exterminator’. I have never quite managed it though they are still around but have to search elsewhere for their food now the lawns have grown.
In the last picture taken in April 2019, I had learned a couple of lessons and had been able to source some ready-made grass. Some of you know I play golf, and when I saw the green staff hollow tinning the greens, I asked the head greenkeeper if I could have a few bags of the tines. He agreed (especially after I shared a glut of my cherry tomatoes with him and his staff, bribery does have its benefits), then I re-seed the patchy area, using a mix of hollow tines, grass seed and compost. It worked a treat.
Next time; The new paths and more about vegetables.