This year I'm experimenting with lawn substitutes. I bought a bag of a seed mix locally called "eco turf," which I plan to broadcast over my existing lawn. I've seen similar mixes sold as "Fleur de Lawn" from Protime Lawn Seed. My hope is to populate my tiny lawn with cute little flowers. It may even extend my lawn's season, since the grass quickly turns brown in late July when our annual summer drought begins.
We'll probably have to stop walking in the lawn barefoot, since the possibility of stepping on a bee is quite real. But I'm hoping to expand the buffet for those tiny stingless parasitic wasps, the kind that do nasty things to aphids. Like lay wasp eggs on their pillowy aphid backs so the baby wasps will have something to munch on when they emerge.
Where else but in the garden do you find such a perfect mixture of the cute and the gruesome?
5.13.2008
Eco turf: Who needs a lawn when you can have a meadow?
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4 comments:
I have had excellent results in controlling/eliminating aphids using lacewing larvae ordered from Planet Natural: http://www.planetnatural.com/site/lacewing-eggs.html. They arrive as eggs, which you place in your garden and when they hatch they are really hungry. Aphids = yum.
I totally want to do this. Being seven months pg, I don't think it'll be this year...
Well it was pretty much the easiest thing I did in the garden this year. I just bought a bag of seed and tossed it around on top of the lawn.
Planted Fleur de Lawn and it has worked great. Got from Amazon.com. I am guessing it probably works better if you till the soil up first rather than over seeding.
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