The MGS Forum
Our gardens, a month-by-month pictorial diary of what's looking good now => Our Gardens => Topic started by: Caroline on March 06, 2016, 05:56:39 AM
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The attached photo, taken yesterday evening, is remarkable mainly because the grass (I cannot dignify it with the name "lawn") is green. Usually by this time of year it is a parched straw colour, with occasional patches of green where the insidious kikuyu grass has taken hold. I then go out on kikuyu "search and destroy" missions, otherwise it takes over everything. But this February we have had twice the normal rainfall, not torrential, but steady wetting stuff, the result of El Nino and Cyclone Winston. As a result the ground is no longer as hard as concrete, and all sorts of plants and seeds are starting into life far earlier than expected. I am thinking of doing tasks which I normally do in late April or early May.
Not so good for grapes, tho' - we are about ten days from picking the chardonnay, and the vineyard team have been flat tack making sure that powdery mildew hasn't got a hold. So far so good...
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Yes, Caroline, Kikuyu is a menace if you are not feeding cattle or trying to stabilise water courses. Which are the main grasses in that lush green sward? Do you have ryegrass and fescue and the like, as in southern Australia?
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Hi Joanna
Where I had to re-sow following the house-build, it's tough lawn grasses, mostly fescue and rye-grass. Some paspalum has also insinuted itself -not as bad as kikuyu but still unwanted. Further down the slope we just mowed the original pasture from the old sheep farm and it is relatively weed-free. Round here, if you disturb the soil sixty million unwanted weed seeds are encouraged to leap into action.