Matt’s Adventures in Northwest Gardening

When we bought this house, the back yard was the jewel of the purchase. It is big and open and sunny, great for parties and just sitting around and reading.

But it was permeated with insidious weeds.

The battle for a green lush lawn v one choked with weeds is a grueling war of attrition. The minute you yield an inch to the weeds, it can take months or years to win back what you previously controlled. The former owners of this house started out with one child - by the time they sold it, they were at number three. Consequently, their attention necessarily changed from working on the yard and garden to their children.

By the middle of my first summer here the whole yard was covered with evil dandelions, covered with clover and thick with moss. I set to eradicate the dandelions quickly with the use of Round Up and other nasty chemicals. The moss, however, I told myself, was not an issue, since it looked green and didn’t grow very much.

After some research into how to reclaim my yard, I learned that moss is one of the factors that can choke out a compromise a lawn. Eventully this may increase room for weeds to squeeze their way into you yard. Grass lawns are like a thick carpet: it forms a dense thatch between which few weeds can grow. Thus, the healthier the lawn, the fewer weeds can succeed.

Entering my third summer here, I have decided that it is time to declare war on the moss, and reclaim this back yard. I bought new seed/fertilizer spreader and some Moss Out fertilizer.

This is the fertlizer. I bought three bags, enough for 15,000 square feet.

Here is a close up of the lawn and the moss. You have to admit is is pretty.


Here is a picture of my new spreader.

I called the local feed store in Kent, WA - Reber Ranch. They sell bales of straw for $5.75, which I think is incredibly reasonable. I have no real frame of reference for the average cost, so I may be way off.

I was originally assuming that for my potato project, I would need to a bale of hay - my pseudo-cosmopolitan lifestyle (local crops are limited to llamas, jumbo jets & meth) led me to think that straw and hay were interchangeable terms. Well, turns out they are not so much: Straw is made from the stalks of long grains, where hay is really just cut up grass rolled up. You put straw on the floors where your horses stand, and you feed them hay.

I have also been made privy to an alternate above-ground potato growing system. This method uses a wood box, with removable slats for the sides. You start the potato at the bottom, and cover it with dirt up to the height of the first slat. Then, as it grows, you subsequently pile more and more dirt on it as it grows taller, forcing the plant to effectively keep pace with the dirt, and thus grow up into the box. Sounds a bit more complex, but it is still in the same idea of my initial straw-centric project.

I also got a book today on Lawns, since I have no idea how to grow anything except dandelions. More when I read it.

And yes, I have a local feed store. Don’t you?