This spring though, it seems every weed known to the mid-south has invaded my yard over the winter.. and in looking around on my daily travels it seems I'm not the only one so afflicted!

I'm so overwhelmed I broke down and sprayed everything with weed-b-gone max several times over few weeks, and then had to go back and hit all the truly stubborn weeds with round-up. So now, I have a bunch of large, cooked, brown bare spots all over my yard. It's quite frustrating to see all my hard work was for nothing. As much as I hate to admit it, I'm ALMOST ready to call ch&m-l@wn ... Or just napalm the whole damned lawn with round-up _-GRRRRRrrrr-_

There is almost no upside to the whole deal:
1. Demands on water in periods of drought.
2. the heavily polluting lawn equipment... and all the stuff that goes into maintaining the stuff.
3. the toxins and problems with fertilizer and weed killers.
3. the noise pollution of lawn equipment... what a racket!
4. Mowing itself is a serious labor....just to be repeated in a week.
5. Then, with all of that, it's a matter of "what the heck am I'm doing all of this for???"

I'm considering just planting most of my yard with desirable and manageable trees. Then, if I must, even allowing English Ivy to take over the lawn duties. Having walking paths cut through the ivy. The ivy is already in most of my wooded area, and it's very little problem... very rarely, I go out and trim it back to the ground around the tree trunks. That kind of work is easy and gives me an excuse to stroll around the area.

Cotoneaster and other shade tolerant ground covers would work as well.

It seems to me, that one could easily have a green "lawn" that requires very little if any lawn equipment, fertilizers, weed killers, and watering!

Even with the price of the trees and ground covers, I get the feeling that the whole deal will end up being much cheaper than lawn maintenance.

Not looking forward to this season's lawn obligations!
Kelton

By the way, Howdy Neighbor!!

I use a traditional style, human powered, reel mower.
It takes less effort to push than a power mower, leaves a better cut (no brown tips the next few days) and it only consumes uses 500ml of beer to cut 1/4 of an acre. (Ok, the person pushing it consumes the beer.)

I don't worry much about weeds though. I just let them hold the soil down until the grass takes over. A good lawn is a war of attrition. We've been here just about 3.5 years.

No fertilizing or pesticides with this much area. That would get expensive quick. Luckily most of this had been pasture for a long time. And yes, the weeds and especially dandilions seem to be much more agressive this year.