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Gardening Experiences November 2008 |
SOME GARDENING EXPERIENCES ON THE COSTA TROPICAL written by Mike Spencer.
 Back to the lawn ......... obviously other work was going on whilst waiting for the weeds to succumb but when they were dead we dug the ground, cleared the roots, stones, etc and levelled it to the best of our ability. Off again to the ‘Vivero’ to buy grass seed that we liberally scattered onto the lawn area and covered in ‘sustrato’ or compost as we Brits know it. We had no idea what seed to buy so had decided that what was good enough for the greens on a golf course would be good enough for our lawn ...... so, of course, absolutely nothing happened. However we did notice numerous columns of ants carrying away what looked suspiciously like some of our grass seed.
 We realised that in the public parks, and similar areas, the grass was very coarse and springy and so, on the basis that what was good enough for the Spanish may well be good enough for us we started to enquire about it. Apparently it is known as “Gramma Croeso” (croeso means coarse) and it did indeed have coarse leaves rather than blades of grass. After fruitless efforts to find seeds we eventually learnt that it had to be planted rather than sown. More fruitless efforts at numerous Viveros to buy plants resulted in our discovering that it could be obtained absolutely free.
All we had to do was go to the parks, collect the runners growing around the edges, cut them into short lengths and plant them. Armed with permission from the local parks department and a supply of dustbin liners we duly collected our supply. Three days of hard effort later the lawn was planted with thousands of 5 centimetre strips of gramma croeso all about 150 centimetres apart. Maintenance whilst it was growing was not much, keep the dog off it, water regularly and that was about it. A year later we had a reasonably well established green, springy proper Spanish lawn.
Since then we have learnt a few things you should know – gramma croeso only grows in temperatures of around 18 degrees or more so don’t plant it too early or late in the year. In the winter months when the nights can be as cool as 10 degrees it tends to go rather yellowish in patches but a quick scarify in the spring brings it back to life. It is extremely tolerant to heat, drought or over watering – don’t cut it too short – it is so thick that weeds have great difficulty in growing through it. Don’t confuse it with gramma fina (fine) which grows just like a spreading weed and chokes everything around it unless well controlled. Lastly, if you want an alternative, we now know there is a grass seed you can sow that will germinate relatively easily and it is called ‘Costa’. However it is not as thick or tough as gramma croeso and needs much more caring maintenance and, well, love!
Click here to read Current Article by Mike Spencer
Other articles about Mike and Trudys´ adventures can be seen in our Home and Garden Section
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