remove grass, insert grass
the past week has been pretty busy preparing a new flower bed in the back yard
along the alley. it’s actually more of a “fence” than a flower bed. for now, the main reason for it is to hide the ugly backyard of the house next door. we are really tired of looking at the random trash (currently an old broken futon, 2 shopping carts, and chunks of styrofoam) along the fenceline. the owner of the house (he owns all 3 houses at the corner) told me he plans on cleaning up and turning the house into an office and putting a parking lot in the backyard. but, from what we hear he is notorious for not following through on what he says and, well, a parking lot is pretty freakin ugly too. so, we'll hide it with 29 Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' (aka Feather Reed Grass) ... a nice sorta-tall ornamental grass. eventually (next year?) we'll add flowers and such to the bed and have the grasses serve as a nice background.i started with layout and turf removal on Tuesday night.
more removal on Weds. and Thurs. and Fri. and Sat. turf removal stinks. i did salvage some strips to try to fill in some bad spots in the back yard. we’ll wait and see if that works. i think i have unfortunately contributed to robin obesity in the northwest Old Town Noblesville area. as i removed turf i found lots of little grubs. a lot of them. something like 5,200,483 of them (plus or minus, depending on if you count dead ones or not). as i came across one, i would grab it and toss it in the alley. not for any particular reason, just something to do to help pass the time. at some point a few of the local robins caught on to this and began feasting on these suckers. i think i must be some sort of robin superhero or something now. grubman.finally on saturday afternoon the last of the grass was finally gone
(gone as in piled behind the shed). i amended the soil with a little new topsoil and manure and began the hole digging process. of course, i found out that the soil is really rocky so it, like every other project out there, took forever. plus it was stinkin hot (today too). we were gone all day Sunday, so we were back at it today. finally by late this afternoon the last of the holes were dug, the grasses were bought (Chrissy cleaned out 2 Wal-marts). several hundred pounds of manure and topsoil later they were planted! hopefully these guys spruce up and fill in nicely (Wal-mart plants are cheaper than they are nice). after a year or so they should be a few feet in diameter and the plumes should top out around 6'. that should hide the alley junk nicely. not sure what to expect out of them this first year. we shall see. hopefully this week we'll get a load of mulch in, maybe edge it with bricks and call it good.speaking of filling in nicely, the veggie garden is looking great.
last weekend we planted green beans, cucumbers and tomatoes. everything is now up except for the lavendar and we have it on good sources that it takes forever. the peas are growing up the bamboo and jute trellis nicely. the beans are growing almost in front of your eyes. we actually had our first homegrown lettuce salad tonight. tasty.oh, and Tony found this huge turtle roaming down our street.
posted by Chris and Chrissy Miller @ 12:30 AM
6 Comments:
that's going to look great when it grows in... yer right, it takes a year or two for plants to establish themselves.
Looks great guys! I'm impressed! That will be so nice to have your own fresh veggies! :) - Jessie
Lots of hard work, I know! Looks great! Beautiful garden, too!
mam
I was just going to ask you how you found 29 Karl Foersters (what lovely plants! i see them in all sorts of gardening mags/books) when I read that you had to stoop to Wallyworld. Alas, I am 5 years and counting without going into Walmart and even ornamental grasses won't making me break that streak.
for $4.88 each i'll buy from just about anyone. wal-mart has their issues (as do many companies), but on limited funds money talks. i'm not against boycotts though ... i'm in my 9th year of my anti-McDonalds run.
re: anti-mcdonalds run
HIGH 5IVE!
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