Hi all,
We did a major overhaul and the backyard of the home we are renting. Basically, we turned a big dirt/weed lot into a teaming micro urban farm. Aside from the garden beds where, thanks to starting indoors and our temperate California weather, our veggies are already knee high. But more importantly, we are nearly done building a coop and run for 5 hens.
We left a patch of "grass" (it was dirt when we moved in in November, knee high wild onion in February, and now is a mix of onion and some kind of patchy grass), about 10'x10' without much of a plan. Now we are thinking it would be great to "farm" grass here for feeding to the girls. They won't have normal access -- we would just cut and deliver to their run or set up a small pen to confine them in this area for short periods at a time. The area is close to the house and doesn't get a lot of sun, so it we decided against building vegetables beds there. The landlords say the ground in that area doesn't really ever dry out. The further we are getting towards summer we are seeing some sun hit the area, so it's not in complete shade.
Here's a picture from back in February when we were still building the garden:
Paths are finally all de-weeded! by emilysaurus, on Flickr
So here's my question (and thanks for getting all the way through my long-winded set-up) - What kind of grass would be best for this area? And should we just seed in with what is already growing or start from scratch? Are there benefits to sod that would outweigh the higher cost?
We did a major overhaul and the backyard of the home we are renting. Basically, we turned a big dirt/weed lot into a teaming micro urban farm. Aside from the garden beds where, thanks to starting indoors and our temperate California weather, our veggies are already knee high. But more importantly, we are nearly done building a coop and run for 5 hens.
We left a patch of "grass" (it was dirt when we moved in in November, knee high wild onion in February, and now is a mix of onion and some kind of patchy grass), about 10'x10' without much of a plan. Now we are thinking it would be great to "farm" grass here for feeding to the girls. They won't have normal access -- we would just cut and deliver to their run or set up a small pen to confine them in this area for short periods at a time. The area is close to the house and doesn't get a lot of sun, so it we decided against building vegetables beds there. The landlords say the ground in that area doesn't really ever dry out. The further we are getting towards summer we are seeing some sun hit the area, so it's not in complete shade.
Here's a picture from back in February when we were still building the garden:
Paths are finally all de-weeded! by emilysaurus, on Flickr
So here's my question (and thanks for getting all the way through my long-winded set-up) - What kind of grass would be best for this area? And should we just seed in with what is already growing or start from scratch? Are there benefits to sod that would outweigh the higher cost?
