reid@Glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) (07/12/85)
When we moved to California from Pennsylvania in 1980, the back yard of our new house was covered with 2000 square feet of black plastic weighted down by stones. That was the previous occupant's grass substitute. We decided to run an experiment. We went to the local garden store and bought a few flats of every kind of ground cover imaginable, including various species of thyme and rosemary, chamomile, etc. After a couple of years we decided to dig up everything else and plant chamomile. Those sections of our back yard that have 3-year-old chamomile are quite delightful. By next summer we hope to have the entire back yard made out of chamomile. Good points: * chamomile is basically a weed, and it chokes out almost everything else. It even manages to choke out oxalis. Weed control is just not a problem. * chamomile smells wonderful, and feels good under your feet. * chamomile has wonderful tiny flowers in the late summer. * I find that I only need to mow it about once every 3 months. * Here in arid California, where it never rains at all between April and November, I find that the chamomile is perfectly happy to be watered once every 2 weeks instead of once every 2 days (which the grass needs). Bad points: * It is not as sturdy as grass. If 12 people play volleyball on it, several weeks of recovery will be needed. * Bees like the wonderful little flowers. * If you don't mow it when it needs to be mowed, it actually dies out (the plants grow so tall that they block the sun to the roots, I think). It's enough of a weed that it never actually dies out, but if you don't mow it every 3 months it will develop bare patches. * It's expensive (we paid $8 per flat for the chamomile seedlings that we planted). If you buy one plant it will propagate at a rate of about 1 foot per year, radially outward from that plant, but it takes a long time to fill your yard at that speed. -- Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA
sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (07/14/85)
> * It's expensive (we paid $8 per flat for the chamomile seedlings > that we planted). If you buy one plant it will propagate at a > rate of about 1 foot per year, radially outward from that plant, > but it takes a long time to fill your yard at that speed. > -- > Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid Isn't it possible to buy seeds? -- Sophie Quigley {allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie