Joan Swenson: A pocketful of rye seeds make the winter lawn beautiful
| Tuesday, Oct 14 2008 06:17 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 02:38 PM
Summer fades and so does the deep green of Bermuda lawns, which can be remedied with the application of rye grass seed.
Rye lawns are beautiful in the winter. Finely textured and of a lighter shade of green than summer’s lawns, overseeding a Bermuda lawn with rye is a good way to have a pretty yard in the dullest of Bakersfield winters.
Plant rye grass when the weather is still warm to get a good crop of grass growing before the days get too short and cool. Many people renovate their lawns, using special renovating machines with flailing arms that cut and remove a buildup of Bermuda thatch, and rake up the leftover sticks, stolons and clippings before overseeding. If you choose not to renovate, do a close cut — not shorter than 1.5 inches — and rake away all the clippings to give the rye seeds closest contact with the soil.
Depending on recommendations, you should put down between three and 10 pounds of rye seed per 1,000 square feet. Use the directions on the package you buy, however, for best results.
Perennial rye grass will last longer into the spring than annual rye, although it is considerably more expensive. Perennial rye will also persist in shaded spots after winter is gone. Our backyard’s Chinese elm provides deep shade, too deep for Bermuda to survive. By overseeding the back lawn with perennial rye, we have lawn under the elm instead of just mud in the winter and a variety of weeds in the summer.
After planting, you should water your lawn for short periods once or twice a day to keep the seeds moist. If you flood the yard, you’ll wash away seeds. When the lawn is thriving and the weather is cool and, we hope, rainy, reduce your watering schedule. You’ll be able to identify overwatered rye lawns in late winter by the blotches of brown fungus that have killed patches of lawn.
Spread the seed with a hand-cranked spreader or a push-spreader. If you’ve been using your spreader to put out pre-emergent herbicide, you should wash and let it dry before doing your overseeding chore. Walk and distribute in even, overlapping paths, first in one direction and make a second, perpendicular trip.
PICK UP SOME PAPERWHITES
I used to dislike the odor of paperwhite narcissus flowers. They were overwhelming and not exactly pleasant. But after growing them indoors, just a bowl or two, each winter, I’ve come to appreciate their singularly strong scent.
Paperwhites — bunches of white flowers with green foliage that resembles onion tops, are easy to find in nurseries now for winter “forcing,” as raising them indoors is called. It must be the simplest chore imaginable. Put clean gravel or smooth pebbles in the bottom of a low bowl with steep sides. Nestle the bulbs in among the rocks, just so they stand upright nicely. Fill the bowl with water until the bottoms of the bulbs are just wet.
In a matter of weeks — I grow these in the fall and typically have them blooming by Thanksgiving — you’ll have greenery and then the flowers. One year I thought my bulbs weren’t going to start growing. Perhaps I started them too early, because suddenly, after days of sitting, doing nothing in the bowl, the bulbs started putting out roots and then greenery. They have their own timetable, it appeared.
The roots will completely fill the pot of pebbles. Keep them watered — they’ll drink in lots of water — and placed where they’re exposed to bright light. I’d put the dish outdoors for the duration of winter. As the greenery fades, I would trim it down, remove the pebbles from the tangled root mass and plant the bulbs together in a sunny spot. They’ll bloom again next fall, as reliably as the winter fog arrives in November.
