Requiem for a lawn

Native gardening is very rewarding, but can also require a lot of work. Sometimes it helps to have friends, especially if they like plants, soil, and manual labor. It turns out that I’m one of those friends, and Margaret and I have been collaborating on her yard restoration project for over a year now. When Margaret told me she was starting a blog about California native gardening, I thought it was a great idea, and I asked her if I could write some posts. She said yes, so now it seems her blog is also a collaborative effort!

I’ll save the details for later posts, but let me give a bit of my gardening history. My yard is located in Irvine, about 5 miles west of Margaret’s. After my wife Karen and I bought our property a few years ago, we decided that watering and maintaining a lawn was not our style. I’m an ecologist, and Karen works for a non-profit that studies water quality, so we were already aware of some of the problems with lawns. Furthermore, the grass never looked happy anyway. On March 22, 2008, we killed our lawn. The remains—2+ metric tons of sod—went out in pieces in the trash. Next week we celebrate the 2 year anniversary of the death of our lawn. Take a look at the before and after pictures (above and below). Do you miss it? We sure don’t. Nor do the dozens of native plant species, bees, caterpillars, moths, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other critters that now call our yard home. Who knows, maybe some morels will pop up under our aspiring manzanita tree? The native strawberries (Fragaria californica) in our back yard are just starting to ripen into red bursts of tangy fruit candy. Talk about “locally grown.”

Check in later for more native gardening inspiration!

Backyard Progress After 5 Months

Planting in Southern California in the fall is definitely the way to go. Getting as much of the winter rain as possible gets everything going and most of the plants are established enough by the spring to flower.

I started the southwest side of the backyard in September with help from my friend, Steve. I didn't water this part of the yard for the 2 years before we started. Here is a picture of what we were dealing with.

The long, brown, root-like things are grass rhizomes. This type of grass is summer growing, so it was dormant at the time, so although they are brown and dead-looking in the dry, cold season they spring to life after the rain when it warms up. We dug them up and raked through the dirt to remove them as thoroughly as possible - hopefully few to none will come back now that they've gotten rain and the heat is coming back! There were also some weeds and cool season, annual grasses mixed in.

Next, in October, I marked out the areas I wanted to plant in with wooden stakes and twine. Steve again helped as we built up a small hill as a feature (next to the wheelbarrow), using the mound of dirt that had been dug up from the front parkway and had been "composting" for a year and a half in the less frequently used east side of the yard. After planting all of the plants, I laid out newspaper (cardboard in some places) before we put down redwood mulch, both to help prevent weeds.

The area with plants, mulch, and sand in the walkways (also with newspaper underneath).

Finally, 5 months later, after an unusually wet year - the plants look great!

I've been keeping up with a small stream of weeds, but I think I had (and still have) an incredibly large seed bank. Before this project, I didn't consistently keep up with mowing or with killing typical backyard weeds. Also, I ran out of newspaper before I was able to cover all of the ground I covered with mulch and sand.  So far it has mostly been forbs and cool season, annual, non-rhizomatous grasses (growing from seed) coming up and they aren't very difficult to remove.

If I had the patience and time, I might have watered the area to see and kill what came up before planting and putting out the mulch and sand.  It's hard to wait though!

Delicious Fungi Volunteers

Lucky me!  Somehow I ended up getting some morel mushrooms in one of the moist sandy spots in the garden near my manzanita (Arctostaphylos peninsularis).  I think they're common (or white) morels (Morchella esculenta).  I wonder how they got there....I'd love to know how to keep them coming back and how to grow even more!

For identification and confirmation that this morel isn't poisonous - thanks to:
The Great Morel Homepage
Edible and Poisonous Mushroom Page by Barbara Bassett, Naturalist

Solarizing Weeds & Grass

In separate parts of my yard I have used different lawn removal methods including: herbicides, digging out the mat of grasses (~1" deep), and just scraping off the very top clumps with some roots after a long period of not watering. Afterward, in all cases except for the deep digging to 1",  I've laid down newspaper or cardboard on all bare soil and around newly planted plants and then put down mulch or sand on top of that. The desired effect is to have to do very little weeding after the removal.  In general, this has been very effective.  However, in the southern facing, sunny sections of the yard and places where it was previously difficult to mow, I've had to do more weeding than I'd like, which brings me to my next lawn removal method.

For the next part of the lawn, I'm trying solarization to kill the weeds and grass as well as their seeds. It's a bit of an experiment since most of what I've read recommends basically tilling the area first. However, the previous owner of the house put down gravel here, making it difficult to dig things up. I figure the plastic will have to stay on for 3 or more months, especially since the temperatures are not consistently high at this time of year in coastal Southern California. Perhaps not an option for a front yard, but viable for the back if you don't mind the look or don't need to use it.