Hi all,
Earlier this year we moved into a house which had a significant amount of ivy growing over the fence and up a privot from the neighbour's side creating a dark and dormant section of backyard with no chance of growing lawn (see image below).
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We have since had the fence replaced, removed the ivy and cut down the privot in the process. As a result, we have started working towards re-establishing our lawn. We began using an off-the-shelf seed (looks to be a mixture of Kikuyu and Ryegrass) in some potting mix spread over the area (yes I know after reading some other posts on this forum that we've gone about this the wrong way, so please forgive us) We wanted to do something in a hurry as the rain in Melbourne has caused a fair amount of mud and our dog was having too good a time out there.
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Realistically, the rest of the lawn isn't in a good state anyway, so i'd like to begin working through a process to extend the little good lawn we have towards the back and take over the weeds that seem well-established. First things first, i'd appreciate if anyone could tell me what kind of grass this is:
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From what little I know, i'd take a guess at some sort of buffalo, but please correct me if i'm wrong. There is a relatively small amount running along the front edges of our lawn close to the house, but as it moves towards the back it breaks up and is mixed in with those broader-leafed weeds (at least I assume they're weeds). A better representation of these weeds mixed with the grass is below:
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I've begun a process of aerating the lawn as best I can with a manual core aerator. It's quite easy towards the back as the "mud" is very soft, but everywhere else the ground is rock hard (even with a good coverage of grass) and almost impossible to properly core.
So... I have a bunch of questions:
- What would be a good strategy for encouraging more of the good (buffalo?) grass to take over the rest of the lawn?
- What are those broad-leafed weeds and is there an easy way to get rid of them?
- Is there anything I can do about the rock hard soil so that I can use the aerator effectively?
- Can I do this in a 100% organic way as I do not want to kill what's left of any creepy crawlies in the soil and would like it to be safe for my dog.
From reading other threads (especially some of Fu's advice), it looks like getting some organic compost would be the go with some seamungus and molasses. I'm not sure where exactly to start since a lot of it is "green", it's just not the right plant causing that green
Thanks in advance.