Side Note

[willowisp]

When I first had fake turf show up in my search my immediate thought was "Ew". I remember it being prickly and completely impossible to mistake for real. Of course it's now been some twenty years, maybe more, and technology has improved. The fake turf company has installed many playing fields for schools in the area, and their parent company has done countless golf courses and sports stadiums. Reviews have been uniformly good. Yesterday the guy came over with a sample of the most recent innovation.

My first response was... Ew! It looks a bit better now; in fact I can imagine with enough of it and from far enough away it may even pass as real. The blades, however, were still prickly. This is not stuff I'd want to walk through in anything less than soled shoes. It wasn't quite as expensive as we were fearing, but still there's no way we would go with it, especially since the courtyard is a small enough area that even the thirstiest grass probably would not drive us over the water limit.

Comments

[torquemada.livejournal.com]

Especially if you get a rain/snow barrel or two, and some low-water grass. =]

[willowisp.livejournal.com]

What others have told us about low-water grass is that it survives droughts and will even green up after getting some water. To keep them green, though, they require the same amount of water as the thirstier grasses. Desert living is so much fun. I'm definitely looking into rain barrels, though. Maybe not until next year, but definitely before we get gray-water reclamation plumbing.

[torquemada.livejournal.com]

If you have rain gutters, you can terminate the downspouts in the rain barrels, though you should make sure the opening into the barrel is screened.

Really, as long as you are watering out of direct sun, you shouldn't need a lot of water to keep the grass going, except in particularly dry weather.

[echoweaver.livejournal.com]

Which doesn't mean it's a bad buy, depending on expense. We have a couple of dead spots in our bluegrass, possibly resulting from gaps in our sprinklers, that are giving us a lot of trouble to green back in. It'd be nice to know that all you need is to fix the watering problem and BOOM grass comes back.

I'm surprised to hear the artificial turf was that icky. The fellow who got it at my church certainly implied that it would pass for the real stuff up close and personal. But I'd never been in his yard, so I didn't know if he was deluding himself.

[zarhooie.livejournal.com]

not quite sure how i happened upon your journal....

anyway. the big bubble sports place about an hour from where i live has fake turf, and it's actually really really nice, at least waht they have.