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magazine / jf05 / indepth
Grass is greener
Story by Erica Simmonds
- Check to see which grasses are native to your area.
- Check the Latin name of the grass you want to buy. The same grasses may be referred to
by different names in different regions.
- Make sure the seed you buy is pure, and there is no other foreign grass seed in the mix.
- A kilogram of grass will cost anywhere from $20 to $400. A kilogram can contain from
300,000 to about 10 million seeds. The average gardener only needs a few hundred seeds.
- Plant native grass seeds in the fall. Many native grasses have a built-in dormancy period;
if they’re in the ground when the snow melts, the moisture helps the grasses to germinate.
- Don’t use fertilizer. Native grasses have grown for thousands of years in Canada, and
they know how to survive. Fertilizer will just help weeds to grow.
- Once they’re established in your garden, you don’t need to water them often, or at all
(depending on how much rain you get).
- To replace your lawn with native grasses, take out the entire lawn, making sure no grass
is left behind. Kentucky bluegrass can pop up and out-compete the native grasses.
- If you don’t want to replace your whole lawn, you can grow native grasses in clumps.
Choose bunch grasses, such as tufted hair grass, rather than creeping grasses, which will
spread.
- Be aware that most native grasses will grow taller than they do in the wild. After they’ve
used up the nutrients in the soil, however, they may grow shorter again.
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