At the moment, my yard looks and smells like a giant corn chip. I haven’t tried it (nor do I intend to), but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that my yard tastes like a corn chip too. There’s plenty of good reason for my yard to look, smell and (probably) taste like a corn chip. After all, I just got done covering the yard with a fine-layer of corn.
The weather’s been getting warmer the past few weeks and before much longer, the flowers will be in full-bloom. And once that happens, along with my allergies kicking into gear, the weeds will start to grow.
I used the Scotts company lawn care regimen for a few years; fertilizer and pre-emergent weed-killer in the early spring, fertilizer in early summer, and winterizer fertilizer in the fall. It worked wonderfully too — the weeds disappeared and the grass grew so thick and high that you could lose a dog in it. A few years back though, I read the warnings on the bag about how you shouldn’t use that stuff in the garden. That got me to thinking about how anything I used on the grass was eventually going to end up in the garden. Not only is the garden in middle of the yard, it’s also on the downhill side, so when it rains, the runoff is going straight into the garden.
So for the past few years I haven’t used any sort of lawn treatment. As a result, these days, I probably have just as much grass as weeds.
After reading a recent column on lawn care, I decided to try something new this year. Instead of putting down any sort of traditional weed preventative, I went out to a local garden center this afternoon and bought a 50 lb sack of Corn Gluten Meal. Spreading it was a familiar enough process, but this stuff comes out of the spreader in billows of yellow.
And so help me, it leaves the yard looking and smelling like a big ol’ corn chip.
Now it’s just a matter of waiting to see how well it works.