oh, hay — my yard is really muddy
Two mastiffs, Seattle’s rainy season, and a yard already half-dead before our second dog moved in added up to a mud problem that I’ve alluded to before. So we finally went with a hideous yet gratifyingly effective solution: we covered the yard in straw.* We purchased four bales from a farm and feed store for $15 apiece and covered the yard to about an inch thick. (The remaining grass underneath it was already dead, trust me.) I’ve since watched the dogs play, run, and roll around for hours, and yet they’re tracking in just a tiny bit of straw and, amazingly, almost no mud at all. Once a week we’re using a rake to redistribute the straw evenly; we’ll mulch or compost it when we’re ready to work on the yard in the spring. And as an extra bonus, I really enjoyed the trip to the feed store. (Now I’m dreaming about keeping chickens!) –Mary T.
*Yes, it’s straw, not hay (as Karen in comments pointed out). But “straw” doesn’t rhyme with “hey,” so I took some editorial liberties.
Despite what they tell you on “hay rides,” that’s straw. Hay is much nicer for sitting on, but is much more expensive (hay is feed, straw is trash), and would break down a lot faster if you used it as mulch (think “very tall grass clippings”).
The only think you want to watch out for is that straw generally still has seeds in it. Around here, the straw is from wheat. This makes our ducks happy, and the seeds won’t last long enough to actually sprout, but your dogs are less likely to take care of this for you.
(And yes, I had to learn all this the hard way too: lifetime suburbanite, yo.)
This is a great idea but also a practical reuse for the hay is in the garden. One weed-free method of gardening involves laying down a thick hay mulch, pushing away the hay in the spots where the seedlings go. The hay in the beds will compost over the course of the gardening season into the garden bed and further enrich the soil. Weeds will have a hard time making it through the hay layer but the lay layer will help retain the moisture for the seedlings intentionally planted. A friend of mine puts down heavy hay every year — 8 inches or so — and has the best vegetable garden I’ve ever seen!
you are the answers to my prayers! we can’t get grass to stick around for our life! maybe we’ll have to give this a-go. our back yard is a bit bigger, but we could do at least part of it where it’s nothing but mud.
do your dogs romp around? our shepard and mastiff run and jump and bite and tackle- have you encountered this with the straw? how’s it keep?
The smell of feed stores is heavenly!
Kristen, these guys play and play and PLAY, and the bigger one in the photo weighs more than 170 lbs (and the “little” one is getting there). I was really amazed the first day we had the straw down — they rolled around in it literally for an hour, and came in with no problem. They shake off most of it before they get to the door, and most of it stayed put. They tend to have favorite spots and when some of the straw gets lumped up, I just get out the rake and redistribute. Overall, I thought this was going to be a wasted effort and was really pleasantly surprised.
oh WOW. wish i had thought about this…MONTHS ago. our two dogs have turned a pretty weedy yard to piles of dirt. it’s a mess!! thanks for the tip…
oh… i live in the seattle area and am in need of straw for sheet mulching… where is this feed store? i must go!
Wren, I can’t remember the name, but it’s a feed store on the main drag in the historic downtown of Burien — not far from West Seattle. Hope that helps!
[...] almost time for us to rake the straw away and get down to the business of reclaiming our yard, and we’re in the market for some [...]
Yikes!!! Fifteen Dollars for a bale of straw. Unbelievable. If I tell my friends at Valley Seeding that, you will be seeing their trucks, loaded with bales, on their way to Seattle. I pay $3.00 tops here in Central PA. It is a wonderful thing-I keep a couple bales dry in the garage, in case I need to pad a muddy spot in the yard or provide bedding for the feral cats I try to rescue.
Well…they were really big bales? ; ) Just kidding. Maybe if we’d looked longer and harder we’d have found a better deal. That was when I had a full-time job, so convenience usually won out.
Sounds too good to be true. What about the Poop?
You just pick it up! ; ) Our dogs are big, their poops are as well. We managed to find it.
.we dont have a very big yard and have three poodles and a hound like ( rosco ) on the dukes of hazzards. but we can not get grass to grow to save our souls we have tilled placed topsoil on it fed it with fertilizer even tried different grasses but none seem to work. i was thinking of placing alot of sand down tillering it in to help with air and drainage (also very muddy ). this is getting to be a big hassel with this lawn. getting to point where i just want to smooth it out and put in turf that was online forsale from some sport center.any ideas deputydog43@yahoo
Deputydog, as time has gone on, we have been replacing more and more of our grass. Last summer we placed several dozen patio stones and planted some moss in between them, giving the dogs an area to run over that won’t be destroyed if they skid. The rest of that part of the yard — it’s what you see above in a photo from last year — we kept the dogs out of for a season to let new grass seed (a hearty variety) grow. Now we’ve allowed them back in there again; we’ll see how it goes.
That part of our yard is officially the front, though both front and back are fenced in. Our official “backyard” (the way our house is situated, we enter through tehe back) had a lot of cement from the 1950s when we moved in, and what remains I’m slowly replacing with hearty landscaping (bushes the dogs won’t destroy if they run into them) and gravel, stone, and shredded bark paths. I’ll do more updates come spring. It’s not a very pretty process in the meantime as it takes awhile to things to establish, and our yard was completely overgrown and neglected when we bought our house. Good luck!
PS Also search Sunset Magazine online for a good article on how to landscape to be dog-friendly.