Gardening Question For Queenie

[OnMyWay]

Queenie, I thought you might be able to offer us a gardening second opinion!

We started planting our terrace beds that are shown here in the first 2 pictures.  There will be more plants.  For the 2 large lower terraces, the nursery lady who did the neighbors house next door suggested that we put frog grass in those or the dirt will really run off during heavy rains.  I think she is right, or, maybe there is another attractive but low maintenance ground cover that could serve the same purpose.  Ideas?  We did get some garden soil in there to supplement the existing soil, but it is only a few inches, and it might easily wash away.

In the 3rd picture, my wife is designing a shade garden that I think will be quite nice!  That grass is the "frog" grass.  There will be a narrow path on the left, flower bed against the house, and more frog grass.

[Queenie O.]

Wow OMW--everything's filling in nicely!  I think that the frog grass is a fairly new grass to the Philippines. From what I've read it's very low maintenance, and good for semi dry or rainy season wet areas. It grows well in part shade or semi shady areas. As you can probably see--it grows out flat or laterally, and when it thickens up, it blocks out all weeds that might try to grow in. Last year a German restaurant near us had it planted it all around outside in their landscaped front area. They said it was pricier than other local grasses, but will last better in the long run.

In the past we put the well known Bermuda grass in one area at our house, and it did well until it got too shady, so we had to replace it with Carabao grass that tolerates shade better. The frog grass is pretty and a good investment for you I think. When we first put our grasses in, we laid out a layer of dried pig or carabao manure, then some good soil to level it off. We had some local nursery people lay the soil and sod, and tamp it in for us, but the manure was carried in sacks and dumped from the area. It does give it a good start, especially where no grass has grown before. If you don't put the manure that's okay too.

 I think that the frog grass is a great choice to fill in, and once established the soil will stay pretty tight, and not wash away. It has a soft and kind of frilly look, as opposed to the regular grasses. Nice.

You guys must be happy with how everything is turning out. Looks great!

Queenie

[OnMyWay]

Well, I'm glad you didn't say the grass was no good, because the lady showed up with a lot of it in the afternoon!  She charges p150 a square meter which was the same at 2 places we checked, but she includes delivery / installation.  Her guys helped with other stuff, no charge, and she took a bunch of used stepping stones off our hands for p8 each, as a credit.  We did put it in the two terraces I mentioned.  I'll get some pics tomorrow.

Thanks!

[OnMyWay]

Here are some more pictures with the grass.  That brown area in the front of the hill will be decorative rocks.  We decided to put the grass in the pathway on the left.

Leila likes the new porch!

[banyanman]

On 1/13/2017 at 7:07 PM, OnMyWay said:

Well, I'm glad you didn't say the grass was no good, because the lady showed up with a lot of it in the afternoon!  She charges p150 a square meter which was the same at 2 places we checked, but she includes delivery / installation.  Her guys helped with other stuff, no charge, and she took a bunch of used stepping stones off our hands for p8 each, as a credit.  We did put it in the two terraces I mentioned.  I'll get some pics tomorrow.

Thanks!

I will be interested to know how you go with your frog grass because I've just ripped mine out and gone back to using carabao grass. Frog grass is slower growing than carabao grass, and mine got overrun with weeds before it could get established (I didn't have any problem with the carabao grass planted in similar areas). Maybe I should have paid more attention to the weeding whilst it was getting established.

Of course for low traffic areas, you can't beat peanut grass (pinto peanut) in the Philippines. The big advantage of peanut grass is that it is a perennial legume, so puts nitrogen back into the soil rather than depleting the soil of nitrogen as carabao and frog grass do. Peanut grass withstands a dry season of four months and grows in partial shade, so is as good as frog grass in that respect. The only disadvantage of peanut grass is that a few of the more aggressive native grasses will grow through it from time to time, but I've found those quite easy to weed out when the ground is moist (and I've only had to do that a maximum of 2-3 times a year).

[Old55]

Queenie will know this.

There is a wonderful group on Facebook and Yahoo, Philippines horticultural society. You could also contact them I've asked them questions and got helpful answers.

 

[OnMyWay]

7 hours ago, banyanman said:

I will be interested to know how you go with your frog grass because I've just ripped mine out and gone back to using carabao grass. Frog grass is slower growing than carabao grass, and mine got overrun with weeds before it could get established (I didn't have any problem with the carabao grass planted in similar areas). Maybe I should have paid more attention to the weeding whilst it was getting established.

Of course for low traffic areas, you can't beat peanut grass (pinto peanut) in the Philippines. The big advantage of peanut grass is that it is a perennial legume, so puts nitrogen back into the soil rather than depleting the soil of nitrogen as carabao and frog grass do. Peanut grass withstands a dry season of four months and grows in partial shade, so is as good as frog grass in that respect. The only disadvantage of peanut grass is that a few of the more aggressive native grasses will grow through it from time to time, but I've found those quite easy to weed out when the ground is moist (and I've only had to do that a maximum of 2-3 times a year).

Thanks, good info!

We are confining the frog grass to small garden areas.  In a few years we are going to redesign the major part of the yard, and I hope to make a large flat area for the kids to play on, and have a play house.  Most likely I will go with Carabao there, as it is much softer, and I think, durable??  In the large area we have now it is "wild" grass but we have some patches of Carabao and they stay nice and green.  I never heard of the peanut grass and it sounds nice  Do you have to mow it?  I think the frog grass will never require mowing, right?

After the fact, I'm disappointed with the quality of the frog grass that they planted.  We didn't know any better and used the same source as our next door neighbor.  Our neighbor across the street planted a small area with frog grass last Friday and you can tell his is much better quality.  Already thicker than mine.  The soil patches ours was in was very clay-like and the grass was somewhat sparse.

We have had a few grass "weeds" spring up in the flower bed areas planted with the frog grass, but easy to pull.  Nothing yet in the flat area where the stepping stones are.  Our Korean next door neighbor spends a lot of time making sure there are no weeds in his frog grass.  He enjoys gardening and they do not have a gardener.  Our gardener is very good and a hard worker, so he does all of that for us.

Here is the next door neighbors grass.  There is a sloping area in the front that did not get watered well, and had to be replaced.  It is all doing well now.  This was installed late November, I think.

This is our stepping stone area

This is the grass in the walkway.  It is doing "ok".  It gets a lot of traffic.

This is the flower bed area

Edited January 30, 2017 by OnMyWay

[Queenie O.]

6 minutes ago, OnMyWay said:

After the fact, I'm disappointed with the quality of the frog grass that they planted.  We didn't know any better and used the same source as our next door neighbor.  Our neighbor across the street planted a small area with frog grass last Friday and you can tell his is much better quality.  Already thicker than mine.  The soil patches ours was in was very clay-like and the grass was somewhat sparse.

OMW, the couple that owns the German restaurant had really good quality established sod pieces installed. Maybe as with any grass, if there are spaces in between, or if the grass s not yet established, weeds will want to get in there. 

Carabao grass is pretty durable.

[OnMyWay]

On 1/30/2017 at 8:50 AM, Queenie O. said:

OMW, the couple that owns the German restaurant had really good quality established sod pieces installed. Maybe as with any grass, if there are spaces in between, or if the grass s not yet established, weeds will want to get in there. 

Carabao grass is pretty durable.

I now know for sure that the frog grass the landscaper brought us was immature and/or inferior quality.

As mentioned previously I used this landscaper because the neighbor used her and it seemed to be a good job.  I think the grass at the neighbor was more mature and she gave us what she had, which still needed to grow for a while.

Today we visited several nurseries where we have bought a lot of things but I never looked at the frog grass in the far back.  He had several large rows of beautiful, thick, dark green frog grass.  No dirt could be seen at all; just beautiful grass.  He also had a row that looked like ours.  I asked him how long before it would look like the good stuff, and he said 3-4 months!

So, I think we should have done more due diligence before buying the grass from that landscaper.  They did prepare the ground and install it for free, but I would have liked the better grass.

[Queenie O.]

2 hours ago, OnMyWay said:

I now know for sure that the frog grass the landscaper brought us was immature and/or inferior quality.

As mentioned previously I used this landscaper because the neighbor used her and it seemed to be a good job.  I think the grass at the neighbor was more mature and she gave us what she had, which still needed to grow for a while.

Today we visited several nurseries where we have bought a lot of things but I never looked at the frog grass in the far back.  He had several large rows of beautiful, thick, dark green frog grass.  No dirt could be seen at all; just beautiful grass.  He also had a row that looked like ours.  I asked him how long before it would look like the good stuff, and he said 3-4 months!

So, I think we should have done more due diligence before buying the grass from that landscaper.  They did prepare the ground and install it for free, but I would have liked the better grass.

Oh Well,  it will just fill in over time, but I guess it will need some extra weeding until then.