Grass is not green. Regular grass that is. We have to water it, fertilize it to keep it looking nice. And mow it even more often after it's been watered and fertilized.
Last year most of my backyard was dug up for another green project ... installing a ground-source heat pump. We re-seeded the dug-up portion of the lawn with regular grass seed. The type that is readily available anywhere (and cheap). It has fast growing grass seed in it to lull you into a false sense of satisfaction that indeed the stuff is growing. I didn't realize that there was annual grass, ryegrass to be exact, mixed in with the seed. Ryegrass has wide grass blades and OMG it really grows fast. The non dug-up portion of our existing lawn was growing at a regular pace but the ryegrass was 3 times as tall and needed to be cut more often. I really didn't like this grass. Our lawn mower was spewing out more fumes and pollution as a result.
I was thrilled when the annual ryegrass didn't come back this year. I didn't want to spend every other day cutting lawn. Another type of grass is growing in place of the ryegrass, and it is nice looking grass but it's a bit patchy. Last year was extremely dry. It was tough for the perennial grass to thrive in drought conditions. The prospect of planting more of the fast growing thick grass to fill in the patchy spots left me cold. I didn't want to spend another year mowing that. There has got to be a better solution, I thought. I searched for slower growing, environmentally friendly grass.
I found it! Grass that grows slowly and doesn't need water or fertilizer. It's perfect. Another way to reduce our carbon footprint with less lawn cutting. If you overseed your lawn for 4 or 5 years you'll end up with the new slow growing grass. I'm hoping that it will be hardy enough to choke out the other grass and weeds. Why buy regular grass seed? Do you really want to spend that much time cutting grass? OK the seeds are more expensive. But think about time and gas prices.
Eco-grass takes longer to grow at the beginning because it is putting down long roots. This ensures that it will be able to thrive with less water. It grows in the sun and shade. Best of all ... it doesn't need cutting. You can cut it if you like but it isn't necessary. See the company's
web site for details.
My new grass seed is sprouting and the grass is growing. The grass blades are very fine. It'll take time for it to fill in, but I can be patient. I'm thinking about the future when I won't need to cut my grass very often. I'll be saving money and polluting less.
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This post is in response to the comment on the June 2007 post about Eugenia cenotaph.