Grass seed lawn products

[canman]

Does anybody know where I can get some decent lawn products like "weed and feed" or something along those lines. I have a front and side yard that I have been working on for a while, but the stuff here in Japan just doesn't seem to work. I noticed in the JR train catelogue they had some stuff, not sure if it was just Canadian grass seed or a combination of seed and fertilizer, but it was Y9000 for a 2kg bag, just a little pricey. Anyway if anybody knows where I can get this stuff I would be eternally grateful.

[GomiGirl]

Have you tried the local hardware guy in your shotengai? The kind of shop that sells everything!!

Have you tried the larger supermarkets that have homewares?

Alternatively, try costco or the flying pig (on-line service)

There are no garden shops in your neighbourhood?

[Charles]

You have a lawn? With real lawn grass and everything? Real yards full of lawn, not just a little patch inside a concrete curb?

As a former state-licensed pesticide applicator and Certified Scott's Lawn Consultant (former as in 30 years ago), I could probably help from a distance.



Just what is the problem? Is it weeds, or a sickly underfed lawn?

If it's feeding, you can just buy fertilizer by the numbers, they all have a three numbers representing Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potassium, a typical grass fertilizer is something like 23-3-4, very high in nitrogen, low in the others. Lots of times you get some generic fertilizer like 5-5-5 and it doesn't really do anything for your lawn, you need high nitrogen. Applying it is a pain in the ass, the only really effective method is granular application with a drop spreader, broadcast spreaders and liquid sprayers are very difficult to apply evenly unless you really know what you're doing. You can burn spots in your lawn and underfeed others, it can look like crap. You need to apply granular fertilizer with one of these:



For weeds, I'd have to know what weeds you have, is it grassy weeds like crabgrass, or broadleaf weeds like dandelions? Herbicides are a very damaging to the environment so the really effective granular arsenic compounds used in the US are probably not available in Japan (they really shouldn't be available ANYWHERE). My philosophy is to get the grass growing really well and it will choke out the weeds naturally. But if you've got something really entrenched like crabgrass, it's a bitch to remove without chemical warfare. Let me know more about your specific weed problems and I'll see what I can cook up. I'm not sure what's on sale in Japan but I do know what is effective in general.

[canman]

I've been to all the hardware places and the gardening shops but they don't sell the stuff I want. I may try a golf course to see where they get their stuff.

[canman]

I have kind of both problems, underfed and a lot of weeds. I find the fertilizer here in Japan is not bad, but as you mentioned its a bitch to spread, and get a spreader like you pictured is damn near impossible. Also the grass here is not the like the stuff back home. I don't know what the grass is like in California(that is where you are from right) but grass in Canada is usually a lot softer and greener than the stuff I have here. I'll have to take a few pictures to give you a better idea. But I appreciate your advice. In my opinion there is nothing nicer than a full green lawn to make a house look nice.

[Charles]

I have kind of both problems, underfed and a lot of weeds. I find the fertilizer here in Japan is not bad, but as you mentioned its a bitch to spread, and get a spreader like you pictured is damn near impossible. Also the grass here is not the like the stuff back home. I don't know what the grass is like in California(that is where you are from right) but grass in Canada is usually a lot softer and greener than the stuff I have here. I'll have to take a few pictures to give you a better idea. But I appreciate your advice. In my opinion there is nothing nicer than a full green lawn to make a house look nice.

Well, I'm in Iowa now, California lawns are quite different, in LA where I lived it was mostly desert climate and they used drought-tolerant grasses, some people even used non-grass groundcover that looked really stupid. But around here, most people have regular old lawns, and what little grass I did encounter in Japan seemed pretty similar. Basically there's bluegrass, ryegrass, fescue, and bermuda grass. Bluegrass is rather finicky, so usually fescue or rye is a little more flexible (but a little coarser blades of grass), bermuda I know nothing about because it's used in the deep south in tropical climates like Florida. I'd suspect you have rye or fescue since they the most widespread and cheapest seeds. I could probably tell if I saw some closeup pics, feel free to PM me and I'll send you my real email address to send some pics.

Anyway, now might be a good time to toss in some grass seed, if you can get a stretch where it rains occasionally. You need to keep grass seed moist, if it's hot summer weather it has to be watered every day while it's germinating, once it starts to sprout it can go a little longer. Cooler spring weather means less evaporation and less demand for watering, it can go a few days without water if the ground is moist. I always seeded the patchy sparse areas in the spring when it was predicted to rain, that always helped avoid having to drag out a lawn sprinkler. You should get some seed in before you start dealing with weeds since the herbicides can kill grass that's just germinated. Just sprinkle the seed by hand, rake the ground lightly so it reaches the dirt, and pray for rain. You can deal with the weeds later, it's best to deal with them in the hotter summer weather, as the herbicides work by attacking their water transport, you have to hit them when it doesn't rain for a while, the hot weather makes them wither up.

You know, I got to reminiscing about my youthful days working lawn care, and I remembered how much I loved getting the grass to grow.. but how much I hated mowing it. So just remember, the better your grass grows, the more work you have to do mowing it.