I had been very proud of my ‘mixed weed’ lawn. It was always green and it didn’t need watering. The daisies were pretty and the pennyroyal smelt wonderful when you walked on it.
A wise person told me years ago that it was really important to have a good edging around your lawn. Then you just had to mow the lawn and the garden would look tidy no matter what was on the other side of the edging. Proof of this was when I hadn’t been able to garden for a few years and it was a jungle with weeds everywhere – people still came round and said ‘your garden is looking great’.
A few years back I decided that perhaps lawns were actually supposed to have grass in them. So, I started using Weed ‘n’ Feed – attach the container to your hose and water the lawn. It works really well at removing all the broadleaf weeds – dandelion, buttercup, plantain, docks – and for the first time I had a lawn that looked ‘proper’.
But in just 2 years, without me realising it, the lawn had been taken over by paspalum. The first year I saw more than usual of the nasty sticky seed heads pop up in summer and thought that it was only for a month or two in summer and I could keep it under control by mowing often. I thought I had won.
Last year I realised that my lawn was now well over 50% paspalum and it had definitely won. Several people told me that you can dig out the paspalum but I would be digging up most of the lawn! I went to buy some weed spray that would kill paspalum and discovered that you have to be a registered applicator.
I contacted a few lawn repair companies that I found on the internet and was quoted some outrageous figures for totally replacing the lawn. I only wanted to get rid of the paspalum.
Then I found Pimp My Lawn (www.pimpmylawn.co.nz). They are registered applicators of paspalum weed spray. They charged $75 for a visit and as well as the paspulum spray, they applied Weed ‘N’ Feed, trimmed the edges and even used the blower to tidy up the leaves. You can have them come as often as you want – monthly if you like or just from time to time. You can only apply paspalum spray at certain times, so they will contact me again in spring to see if I need them to come back.
Now my lawn looks like a bomb site with large patches of dead paspalum – I’m winning!
Hilarious!