I live in suburbia. In fact, I’m so deep in suburbia that I’m not only on my local Homeowners Association board, I’m the President of the HOA. Turns out it’s not much work and as an HOA we’re more focused on building community and helping out our neighbors, but everyone on the ‘hood still has that great symbol of suburban life: Grass. Should we all xeriscape? Probably. Have any of us taken that step? No.
And so, if I am to have a lawn, it behooves me to make it as lush and green as possible and since my priorities are usually somewhere else than gardening, I want the entire maintenance process to be simple. I’ve done nothing some years, forgot to turn on the sprinkler one summer, and for the last couple of years had a service come by to spray fertilizer and weed killer. A very expensive service, I’ll add. This year I thought I’d try something new and signed up with Lawnbright to do it myself.
As I wrote a few months ago [ see Getting Started with Lawnbright ] the company sent me a test kit to send them a soil sample to analyze, then sent me a number of different spray-on products, all organic, all animal and child friendly. I’ve now sprayed almost a half-dozen different times, mostly alternating between “Weed Wipeout” weed killer and “Green Machine” and “Black Magic” fertilizers. As the heat of the summer has arrived, I also once sprayed Hydro Boost, which the company describes as “improving cellular function, improving root growth and enhancing nutrient uptake.”
The good news is it’s definitely working. In fact, my neighbor has inadvertently become part of my experiment because I’ve been careful not to spray her grass, just my own. This photo speaks louder than words in terms of how it’s working:
Needless to say, the foreground is her narrow strip of mostly dead, yellowed grass, while all the yard behind the mailboxes is my front lawn. I admit, my yard isn’t gorgeous, putting-green-quality grass, but remember that I apply Lawnbright, mow every 2-3 weeks, and otherwise rely on my Rainbird automatic sprinkler system.
One of the things I’ve been curious about is what would happen with a dead area on my own lawn just below my flower circle. If you go back to my April photos, you can see it pretty clearly. Well, it’s not just grass, but that area is now green, albeit I think some of my flower seeds might have migrated out of their assigned zone:
Again, be aware that I didn’t bother seeding the area, so while the center of the area is clearly foreign plant life, the grass has definitely grown quite a bit into the zone too. Here’s that same area from two months ago:
At this point, I’m waiting for the July spray bottles to show up, with just one more application of Weed Wipeout left. Here’s what I have on my garage workbench, ready for a little break in our rain to apply it:
I’ll note that my neighbor has also been impressed by Lawnbright and she’s signed up to get the sprays too. As a result, I can share the questions she had for me, and my answers too:
Do I Have To Buy A Sprayer?
The very first box I got from Lawnbright included two hose attachment sprayers, a green one for fertilizers (you can see it on the table, above) and a green and purple sprayer just for the weed killer that I have on top of an otherwise empty bottle of Weed Wipeout. When I’m ready to spray it, I’ll open the seal on the new bottle, screw the top on, attach it to a hose, and proceed.
Is It Hard to Spay On?
The instructions tell you to run the hose as low to medium, but I’ve found that having it almost at max works best. The sprayer has three settings, OFF / WATER / APPLY so I generally flip it to WATER (only) until I’m ready, then APPLY to have it pull up some of the liquid as it sprays water. Then I just walk backward from the furthest point on my yard, spraying slowly and evenly from side to side. By the time I spray my front yard then my (much bigger) back yard, the bottle’s completely empty. Applied!
Does It Smell?
One reason to go with organic, child and pet safe product is so you don’t have to worry about anything toxic. I will say that there is one liquid I have sprayed on (Black Magic?) that actually has a pleasant smell. That only lasts an hour or so but it’s also visible on application too, making it easy to know where you’ve sprayed and where you haven’t. The others are essentially invisible on application.
All in all, I’m very impressed with Lawnbright so far and am happy to have one of the nicest lawns on the street. How will it look after the pounding heat of July into August? We’ll see. I don’t know that anyone in my neighborhood has a lawn that survives the tail end of the summer, so it’ll be an interesting comparison. And, of course, to see how my neighbor’s lawn comes back to life as she starts to use Lawnbright too.
I’ll post more updates as the summer progresses. In the interim, do check out Lawnbright and see what you think!
Disclosure: Lawnbright is sending me a year’s treatment products without charge in return for me sharing my experiences with the product on my own yard. Which my neighbors definitely appreciate!