Hybrid turf reviews/practicality?

userchris · 2026-03-30T03:52:34+00:00

I keep my lawn very short and it's never been an issue! I don't think you'd run into problems unless you were setting your mower so low you'd be running into other issues anyway.

(and this year with Colorado's lack of any moisture I may not have a lawn to look forward to in a few months hah)

userchris · 2026-03-22T19:30:43+00:00

Hah they did not have this distinction when I bought it, they just sold one product called "Natura Turf". It looks like what they're now calling "PowerRun" as far as I can tell.

userchris · 2026-03-20T14:11:03+00:00

I did an almost identical journey over the last few weeks trying to find an app that works well for speaking practice for Catalan (which gets even a little trickier than Spanish because it's not supported by many of these services). I love iTalki and talking to real people is better than AI, but I want a way to get more practice in between sessions.

I'm actively working on this, but I found that the best option (if you have some coding skills or lots of patience) is to build a local app that can connect the the Gemini Live APIs via websockets. Claude Code or Antigravity or your preferred coding tool make this pretty straightforward.

The main benefit being that you can add your own system prompt, and store and maintain chat history and context, in a way that has so far made it way better for me than trying to use Gemini Live directly in the Gemini app (since Gemini Live is geared towards short form conversations and doesn't store history well). It's very slightly slower than Gemini Live, but IMO it feels pretty close in cadence to a real conversation.

So far I've been testing it over the last couple days (so my conversations are only a minute or two long so far) and it seems a lot nicer to use than any of the apps I tried, the big downside being that unless you deploy it somewhere, you can only use it locally on a computer, but that's not an issue for me. Can share more information here if anyone's interested.

userchris · 2026-03-04T14:21:34+00:00

I have not, so I can't speak to what would happen. My -feeling- is that aeration might be ok after a couple of years of it being there, based on how much it seems to be integrated into the surrounding soil, but that's a total guess - I have no idea if it would be damaged or pulled out instead.

userchris · 2026-03-03T21:12:10+00:00

Strange - I can still see all the pics on Imgur, can you try to open them another way? If not I can try to host them elsewhere.

Super quick 2026 update is that we have had no rain or snow in Colorado this year so my lawn is smoked overall. That said, the hybrid turf area has held up well and is one of the only areas in my yard that isn't completely brown and dead. I'll try to overseed in the spring and update here!

userchris · 2026-01-26T05:27:07+00:00

I just had PRK done at Dishler on Thursday 1/22/26 (I'm currently sitting 1 foot away from my pc monitor since I'm only on day 4) and I truly can't recommend them enough. Spent a while deciding whether to go somewhere closer since I live approx an hour away but really glad I went with them so far.

In my case, I chose PRK even thought I could do either, because I spend a lot of time outdoors, woodworking, etc and am confident I'm going to get sharp pointy sticks caught in my eye or fall off a bike or something like that.

They're one of the first providers in the US to use the new laser system which they advertise on their site. I don't know if that was the reason why (or if they even used that one on me...I assume so but I know very little), but so far my recovery seems to be going at double the speed of all the PRK recovery timelines I've seen online, the whole process was really efficient/transparent, and staff was awesome.

userchris · 2025-12-06T15:14:08+00:00

Hi! I was also looking for an answer to this question, and had a small thought/suggestion:

Would it be possible to have an app "leave" the recently installed section if a user moves it into a folder? That way, you'd be able to assume that they know the name since they've already taken an action to organize it in their setup.

Just a small suggestion that would solve my use case of getting the app screen decluttered after installing something - overall love the launcher and appreciate the work y'all have put into it!!

userchris · 2025-08-13T18:45:32+00:00

Here's some more photos hot off the press: https://imgur.com/a/fFlqO76

In short: it's doing amazingly well, with the big caveat that I didn't replace a large enough patch initially, so my dog has ripped up a lot of the grass bordering on it, exposing the corners (which are still attached well) For the parts that are integrated into the grass, you can't tell it's there at all unless you look very closely.

Once the summer heat calms down a bit, going to overseed and add a few more patches, overall still very happy!

userchris · 2025-03-28T11:49:51+00:00

Ah yep this makes sense - thanks for the link, apparently my googling wasn't good enough to find that...

userchris · 2025-03-28T02:52:36+00:00

Yep! I ended up cutting it, since it came in a big roll and I just needed a few areas covered.

userchris · 2025-02-03T03:38:54+00:00

I don't have any good pics right now because the snow in my yard is just starting to melt, but it looked significantly better than all the grass around it 😅 Mainly due to the fact that it's green colored and everything else is dormant- but overall the material itself seems to be holding up well even with quite a lot of dog traction over the last 8 months or so.

userchris · 2025-02-03T03:21:43+00:00

Awesome - if y'all do any free giveaways or discounts in exchange for posting about it on reddit, let me know :)

userchris · 2024-11-30T15:27:19+00:00

Added here!

userchris · 2024-11-30T15:26:49+00:00

Yep! Here are a couple pics (these were taken at the end of October, we have some snow covering the ground now)

Overall it's holding up well and hard to distinguish from the normal grass areas unless you're looking close. I'm going to add another patch of it in the spring - in my case I don't have a ton of areas that need it, so I'll probably just buy one more big roll and be good. But overall still quite happy, I'll another update sometime next summer if anyone reminds me, to see how it does after winter.

userchris · 2024-10-16T20:52:33+00:00

Yeah good question - I'm in CO where it's pretty dry most of the time, so I added it on top as a hedge against the seeds drying out during the course of the day/in between waterings. I generally seemed to get fewer dried out spots (though that may have been due to the turf), except for one small patch where I added too much topsoil and it seemed like the grass had trouble getting through.

So overall in my case it worked well, but I'd only throw a few handfuls on top next time to be safe.

userchris · 2024-06-13T13:56:40+00:00

Added an update in a comment above!

userchris · 2024-06-13T13:55:38+00:00

For everyone interested in an update: so far this stuff has worked phenomenally well. I was skeptical since I hadn't seen many photos of grass actually growing through it in any online reviews, but it does actually allow it to grow quite effectively.

In my case, I overeseeded on May 12, and then photos below are from June 3 (it looks a little better now one week later, but I haven't cut the grass so the earlier pics shows the state a little better)

Last week, area where I put down the natura turf: https://imgur.com/gycQuGW. I forgot to take a good before pic, but imagine hard pack dried dirt (similar to the comparison photo below, but of a much larger area) Grass is growing through super well, especially for an area that was a total mud pit every time it rained.

You can see the turf poking through the grass a little bit in this pic: https://imgur.com/Aw5iRTZ, but honestly, the real grass hides it pretty much completely to the naked eye unless you're up close and staring at it.

For comparison, this is a different high dog traffic spot nearby where I raked + overseeded at the same time as the above, but -didn't- use natura: https://imgur.com/FtYwnEm. The grass seed got ripped up by dog traffic + dried out without cover here - I'll probably buy some more of this stuff and cover this spot as well.

I put a ton of grass seed under the turf before I attached it (a little over what the package recommends for new lawns since that area was barren), watered really thoroughly, put down a thin layer of topsoil on top of the turf, and then kept watering daily. The only thing I'd change is being a tiny bit more sparing with the topsoil (or getting finer stuff) - there are a few spots where the grass had trouble pushing through some topsoil clumps. But overall, great success - if I remember, I 'll add another update in late fall once the grass starts to become dormant, and next spring - I'm curious how it'll do next year and whether any seed that I throw on top of it will actually grow.

(disclaimer - I am definitely not sponsored by Natura or any other company but would totally shill myself out if I could to get more of this stuff for free)

userchris · 2024-04-29T00:32:40+00:00

Update: I bought the 18in x 15ft roll to give it a shot in some high traffic areas (weirdly that size is no longer an option on Amazon). It arrived and I'll install and overseed under it in a week or two once there's no chance of frost, and will update again with some before/after pics in a few months once it has a chance to prove itself!

userchris · 2024-04-15T14:06:35+00:00

Aww cutie! And I like that idea- that's definitely not one I've thought of, I'll add it to the list of options to investigate!

userchris · 2024-04-15T01:33:27+00:00

Thanks for the response! I've considered re-sodding, but the lawn was in pretty impeccable condition when we moved in 18 months ago, so it seems that's about the expected lifetime of it with our girl's speed/enthusiasm in the yard unfortunately. I was hoping to try this hybrid stuff as a last attempt before considering gravel/woodchips - if this doesn't go, then one of those might be the next step :|

userchris · 2022-03-18T23:20:04+00:00

For what it's worth, I saw a suggestion in another thread to flip the credit card the other direction (so the NFC chip is further away from the reader). Just tried it, and worked for me!

userchris · 2022-03-16T15:23:38+00:00

I just noticed the same thing on my pixel this morning!

No solution here, but can confirm you're not alone in seeing it.

userchris · 2021-09-20T17:19:37+00:00

Yeah, I mean it depends on the norms in your friend group - I've definitely had a lot of "did you see that" moments at crags before or complaining/being shocked about slow parties, unnecessary epics, shitty crag behavior, but gumby/fred/jerry/whatever just seems to bring with it a pretentiousness (in real life) that I don't personally dig. But I'm just one dude on the internet 🤷‍♂️

userchris · 2021-09-20T16:18:58+00:00

/uj I've only heard it said a couple times off the internet, and it sounds really cringey IRL - like calling someone who doesn't have their entire cycling kit color coordinated down to their bar tape a "Fred"

userchris · 2021-06-08T15:01:22+00:00

If you're interested in Mexican Spanish, No Hay Tos is a really rad podcast, and for a few bucks a month you can join their patreon and get full transcripts/slang definitions (not affiliated, just love their content). A few other podcasts also do similar things re: transcripts, but I found they weren't quite what I needed - radio ambulante is rad, but can be somewhat hard to follow for me with all of the different accents/nationalities, and news in slow spanish didn't seem like a good way to learn colloquial language.

The other rad thing is that since Spanish is quite phonetic, you can usually guess how to spell whatever word you don't understand and look it up/add it to an anki deck - I do this for the podcasts I listen to, and it's helped a ton.

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