LESLIE: Chris in Virginia’s doing some gardening. How’s it going?
CHRIS: We have some pretty severe underbrush that I have been unsuccessful in about three different attempts in six years to (inaudible).
LESLIE: Well, what have you tried, Chris?
CHRIS: I have done everything. At one point, we sprayed an herbicide on the back slope and then, you know, waited a couple of weeks and planted grass. Other times, I’ve gone through and just shaved it to the ground and tilled it and tried to, you know, pull out roots and anything I could to just kind of clean it up.
TOM: Have you tried Roundup, Chris?
CHRIS: Not specifically, no.
TOM: Roundup is a very … is a very good way to take an area of your yard that’s completely out of control and get it back to sort of ground zero.
CHRIS: OK.
TOM: And what you do is you spray this on everything that you want to get rid of. And the best time to do this is the fall. It will start to die away probably within two to three weeks. And then, as it starts to get brown, you can plant grass seed right above that. Because the Roundup that you sprayed on the plants, after a couple of weeks, won’t affect the grass seed. And what happens is that underbrush will kind of die away and the grass will come up through it. And the underbrush does a good job of holding that grass seed in place and not letting, you know, the birds get to it. And really giving it a place to knit.
And the reason you’re doing this in the fall is because it gives the roots a chance to take hold and get long enough to support it through the hot summer that will occur next year. If you try to do this now, you’re going to find that it’s too hot for the grass to really grow. So wait until the fall, apply some Roundup to all that underbrush, wait two to three weeks, plant some grass seed and you should be good to go. By next year this time, you should be looking at a nice lush green lawn.
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