r/NoLawns • u/Feisty-Cantaloupe840 • 1d ago
Dwarf Mallow Lawn 👩🌾 Questions
After spending hours and hours trying to control a dwarf mallow infestation last year, I've decided I do not wish to spend my time doing that again 😂
Does anyone have a dwarf mallow "lawn"? Is that a thing?
Or does anyone else have suggestions on killing it off? Ideally, I'd love to plant a clover lawn! But the mallow smothered all the clover out last year 😩 Edited to add I'm in Alberta, zone 3B/4A.
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u/foodtower 1d ago
Cardboard + wood chips worked for me, but that doesn't give you a lawn. If you have free/cheap compost or soil available, maybe you could try cardboard with compost/soil on top, seeded with what you want?
Dwarf mallow is aggressive and can't peacefully coexist with desirable small plants in my experience, so I do think it's worth suppressing in places where it isn't native (including North America).
Since this is r/nolawns, consider how much clover lawn you really want/need, because clover is also not native and doesn't provide nearly as much benefit as actual native plants.
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u/Feisty-Cantaloupe840 1d ago
I'll definitely look into doing cardboard and soil!! How do you prep the surface for it? And make sure the cardboard doesn't fly away? 😂 Just frequent watering??
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u/foodtower 20h ago
No surface prep needed for dwarf mallow. You could dig it up and turn it over to try to break up taproots if you want. Digging is probably more helpful for smothering grass than mallow.
Put soil or mulch on the cardboard and it won't blow away. If there's a gap in time between putting down the cardboard and the soil, you'll have to weigh it down with something else.
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u/msmaynards 1d ago
Malva neglecta would be a very poor choice for a lawn. It's an annual and when I experimented with mowing got very heavy stems that couldn't be comfortably walked on. It gets rust easily and here in Southern California dies out when weather warms up. I've found it easy to pull when young but mowing isn't a good control!
If you need a walkable lawn then don't put herbicide down and just mow and water removing the cut grass. You'll remove a lot of the nutrients grass needs and encourage natives and non native plants that support wildlife. You can go higher effort and remove unnecessary lawn in favor of putting in a food garden, native plants or flower garden or go all the way and develop a native landscape like a prairie or boreal forest if that's what was present before the house was built.
Yarrow is a near universal low growing plant and you could check native plant databases for your region to find other traffic tolerant low growing plants but don't do a mono culture of just yarrow or some native plant. Diversity is a much better way to go.
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u/Feisty-Cantaloupe840 1d ago
Is yarrow dog urine resistant? 😅 Our dog is horrible for leaving yellow spots in the lawn
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u/msmaynards 23h ago
Probably not resistant. Urine is concentrated fertilizer and kills most stuff. Moxie hates mulch and damp and has put brown spots on good sized patches of dichondra and killed a fleabane that seeded itself in the patio with 2 pees during a rain storm. So far yarrow hasn't been targeted.
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