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[JimDunlop2]

No... Not THAT kind of grass... What did you think I was going to talk about?

But now that I have everyone's attention...



We'll be moving into a new house very soon and gosh darn it, I want a lawn! Yeah, it'll be a fairly small one, but none the less, I prefer a nice, green lawn over sweeping dirt with a witch's broom like the obaasans do around here.

Here's the problem. What should I look for? I love Kentucky Blue Grass, but my friend tells me that the sun tends to be too hot for it in Japan, and it'll die. (And you gotta water it almost daily).

He said he tried "mixed" seed from the store, and most of the nice varieties died, leaving patches of weird grass -- kinda like a cancerous poodle.

I know I can buy sod, but apparently Japanese sod is of the "creeping" grass variety, which dies in the winter... Don't really want that either.

How about golf course grass? Japan certainly has some nice golf courses... Can I buy that in a store?

Finally, what if I can get a friend to find a hardy variety back home.... Is it legal to import the stuff into Japan?

Anyway, has anyone of you (lifers) had success growing grass here in Japan? I miss my lawn... (sniff)...

[Celeste]

Here is a site that has a lot of descriptions of different kinds of grass. http://www.prolawn-plus.com/grasses.html

How far North are you?

[guest of Japan]

When I lived in rural Chiba 2 years back I had a small lawn at the school provided house. Trust me, you will get sick of grass. It grows at an unbelievable pace in the summer and very big spiders like to live there. I went to NY for three weeks in August and when I came back the grass was 3 feet high. Of course the grass was probably about 60 percent weeds.

Happy gardening.

[madeira]

I have the same problem... but I can't deal with it until I finish removing some excess trees and install some kind of drainage in the back yard.

I think Sakata seeds should have more types of grass. The DIY shops here sell 'korai shiba' only, which looks terrible in the winter.

I started a thread about grass in the Japanese gardens section of gardenweb. (About a year ago, when I was stupidly optimistic about how quickly I'd be ready for planting...) There were some good suggestions.

In the meantime, you should join the yahoo group 'gardeninginjapan'.

Other than that, walk around your neighborhood and see if ANYONE has a decent looking lawn. Then pester them with questions.

[freddie's friend daniel]

Our neighbours have astro-turf! Zero maintenence and green all year round...

[matador]

I live in Yokohama and just put down a can of grass seed about 3 weeks ago. It seemed a bit patchy so I put a second can down last week. Its coming along quite well but the damned weeds, etc seemed to grow faster than the grass seed. It may well be a Tolkien-length journey but a good (ish) lawn is on the cards for next year...

[Sweetsee]

I planted sod and it died, leaving a nice brownish surface with scattered weeds.

You don't want grass, less you plan on puffing it.