Most people get bored and tired of the regular maintenance and care of lawn turf for long period. It gives them more stress if they get any disease or do not grow well. Lawn turf diseases, infections, algae treatment and recovery sometimes take longer time than expected.
Even after full recovery, if you ignore the care of lawn turf, it can be sick again.
To overcome and release the stress of lawn turf, and bring diversity in plants without weeding, a lawn meadow is a solution. It is more natural, needs less maintenance, is nature-friendly, more peaceful, and attractive than lawn turf.
Here, you can realise many benefits and advantages of lawn meadows.
Turning a lawn turf into a meadow in USA
Turning a lawn into a meadow release you from weeding, regular mowing, aeration, regular fertilization, and other lawn maintenance works. In simple words, a lawn meadow reduces all lawn activities to a minimum.
Why lawn meadow?
Lawn meadows make your lawn more diverse with various plants, flowers, and grasses and give you fresh and natural vibes even in modern houses.
Well, living near a lawn meadow is not just peaceful but it has some scientific advantages too, comparatively lawn turf.
A lawn meadow is more eco-friendlier than lawn turf. Lawn meadows balance carbon emissions more effectively than turf or grass. With diversity and allowing nature, a lawn meadow is a very nature-friendly adjustment to a lawn.
Reasons of using native seeds and plants
How to turn a lawn into a meadow?
Here, we gave you an example of using wildflowers and a few other native USA types of grasses and plants for your meadow. So consider this as a section of your lawn that we are turning into a lawn meadow.
Let's understand the requirements you have to turn a lawn turf into a lawn meadow.
Requirements for a lawn meadow
Although later maintenance costs and requirements of lawn meadow are very low but initially, you need to make efforts to turn lawn turf into a meadow.
Following are the requirements for a lawn meadow-
Seeds
Choose native seeds for all the flowers, plants, and grasses. Some native wildflower seeds are-
- Black-Eyed Susan
- Blue Vervain
- Cardinal Flower
- Common Self-Heal
- Common Yarrow
- Fall Sneezeweed
- Fireweed
- Nodding Onion
- Purple Coneflower
- Wild Bergamot
Some native grasses are-
- Red fescue
- St Augustine grass
- Bentgrass
- Buffalo grass
Compost
You can completely go with organic waste compost or any other 100% decomposed compost. Don't use fresh or less than 70% decomposed compost, otherwise, it can burn your plants.
Tools required
- A long handle(metal-made) weeding tool to clean all the weeds from lawn turf.
- A Scratching tool to scratch the dead lawn grass from the turf.
- Lawn turf removing machine or tool.
- PPE kit for safety.
- Seed spreader for equal spreading.
- Plowing tools to plow the soil under the turf.
The process to turn a lawn into a meadow
We are considering that you are going to turn a section of lawn turf into a lawn meadow.
The following steps will guide you so you can turn your lawn into a meadow(keep the sequence in mind)-
Wear safety kit
Wear your PPE kit or any other safety kit that can save your hands(gloves), mouth(mask), Eyes(glasses), and feet(gum boots).
Weeding of lawn grass
First, clean all the weeds of the section you are going to turn into a meadow. Use any weeding tool to remove all the weeds cleanly.
Cleaning lawn turf
Now, you have left most lawn grass turf in the particular section. You have to clear it to give space for a lawn meadow.
Use particular tools and remove all the lawn turf from this section. Either you can use it further in space or give it to needed people.
After removing turf from the section, you have left empty land soil.
Lawn soil plowing
Use plowing tools to plow and release the stress of the soil. It will help you when you will spread the seeds for germination. Don't plow more than 4 inches in the soil, otherwise, it will take more time for seed germination.
Making a slope in the lawn section
Slope making in this lawn section will help to drain the extra water in the soil.
Use various size stones to provide a slope under the soil and cover it with a thick layer of soil in the middle and slightly thinner(than the middle portion) in the corners so you can get a 10 degrees slope in your lawn section.
Soil pH and fertilization
Now, you have to inspect the soil's health and pH. In the case of strong alkaline or acidic soil condition, you need to use neutralizing fertilizers that can keep it slightly acidic or alkaline to neutral.
After soil treatment, you can mix (>90%) decomposed compost with the soil. Spray some water to keep moisture in the soil.
Seeds spreading
You don't need to panic about seed mixing. In reality, this is the purpose of lawn meadows to grow various native plants together to make them diverse. So, take all the native varieties of seeds that you've got and mix them in a certain ratio.
Fill all the seed mixture in the seed spreading tool and scatter it in the soil equally.
After seed spreading, cover the seeds with a very thin layer of the same soil by using the long handle reck tool.
Irrigation
Spray water only in lack of moisture in the soil. Otherwise, leave the soil as it is and wait for seed germination.
Later composting, irrigation, and weeding
Once your lawn meadow gets germinated, you can irrigate it once. Don't wet the soil but irrigate to make the soil moist in summer.
When your plants start to get roots stronger(become young), then you can fertilize them once in 45 days. You can keep irrigation every 10 days but it will not harm your lawn meadow to make it longer period to irrigate. Also, natural rain may help you to save your extra irrigation.
Weeding is not necessary for a lawn meadow because this is one of the purposes of a lawn meadow to allow diversity amount the plants on the same land.