Absolutely #1 on the list of re-doing our front yard is NO GRASS. Currently there is “grass” but it’s not attractive at all (because we don’t tend to it)
I’m not sure if our front yard can be qualified as green, but there are still bits of green that need to be killed.
Wendy and I looked through many articles and talked to a few nurseries about how to best kill the rest of the grass so that our front yard would be completely barren and ready for planting. Ultimately we decided to use Round Up. There were a variety of reasons, but the top ones were that it was a fast process and it killed things from the root. I found this article especially helpful, though I modified things a bit (mostly out of laziness and poor planning).
Here’s what our weeds looked like to start
Per the instructions I gave the yard a good water
You’re supposed to wait a full day before you do the first spray of Round Up, but it was really hot that day so I did it the same day. I bought a bottle of concentrate for $20 and mixed it in a spray bottle
Then I sprayed THE ENTIRE YARD. This sucked. Our yard isn’t even very big and it took me nearly and hour and a half crouched over spraying all those blades of grass, man eating weeds and dandelions. And at the end my forearms were very tired from squeezing that damn spray bottle.
It’s important to spray your yard when it’s warm outside and spray in the beginning of the day so it has the full day to bake in the sunshine and heat. Though I did it in the middle of the day and it still worked out fine.
I sprayed the yard two Wednesdays ago and per the instructions I gave it two days to work it’s magic. On that same Friday the weeds were looking like this
That Friday morning I sprayed round two. This time I spent another $20 and bought the pre-mixed spray container
While this went A LOT faster because its spray was wider than the spray bottle, it didn’t cover as much area. I only used 1/3 of the concentrate bottle during round one, and the pre-mix only covered about 1/2 of the yard. While it’s a lot more convenient, it costs a lot more. So I finished round two with the concentrate I’d already purchased.
Here’s what it looked like after round 2 and after I’d put the stakes in our yard to flag it off for utilities to know where we’d be landscaping to mark for pipes in the yard
Again, I waited two days till round three when I sprayed anything left that was green (that same Sunday).
Just a reminder, here’s where we started
And now, here’s our front yard after it’s been sprayed with Round Up three times and been baking in the sun for about 10 days
I’m so excited to see everything dead. I know that’s a strange thing to read because normally we want front yards to be lush and beautiful, but we gotta kill the yard before we replant it.
What’s up next? This weekend we’re hoping to get all the dead grass ripped out and because the Round Up has killed it from the roots we’re hoping that it has a harder time growing back. Not to mention we’ve looked into all different kinds of weed block. We’ve also got to dig and build a couple french drains because we’re not super thrilled with how the roofers planned out our gutters (and didn’t talk to us about it before they installed them, just another reason we hate Westco/Berkeley Roof Services) and we also don’t have great drainage against the house. Hopefully next week we’ll have great progress to share!
Deb says
This is exactly what we did to kill the vinca in our front yard. We then ripped it all out, tilled it up and planted new grass. I can't remember what kind of grass seed Brian bought but it didn't require straw. It was pretty pricey but it was soooo worth it. We water it for about 20 minutes every night and it's already coming in nice and thick. I've never had grass grow this easily before! Can't wait to see what you do out here!
meryl rose says
Good to know that's what you guys did too and that it worked! Are you having any grow up where you ripped it out and now don't want it?
kelly says
Ugh, Monsanto is a horrible company and it's sad people are still giving them money by buying their products. Couldn't you have just rented a sod cutter or dug it up with shovels?
meryl rose says
We debated those options for that very reason, but unless you kill the root, the grass tends to come back a lot. Even getting it out with a sod cutter or diffing it out leaves a lot of the roots so you're really only removing the top layer and not all the grass so it's not as effective at actually killing it so it doesn't come back. But believe me, we hate Monsanto and it sucks buying their products.
meryl rose says
*digging, not diffing. Sheesh, get it together Meryl.
Deb says
We've actually had some morning glory pop up (another thing that was intertwined with the vinca – ugh!) but no vinca or ivy has shown up yet – we're keeping our fingers crossed!!