Why I Oughta...

Last week, I shared here on my lawn diary a little breakthrough.  For the past 18-or-so months, I've been watching a grassy weed creep along and begin to migrate from my far backyard to closer to our patio.  And, after reading about various grassy weeds, I came to the (initial) conclusion that I was dealing with Poa Annua - or an annual Bluegrass.  It was showing some of the signs like being lime green.  But, after observing the lawn this Spring, I noticed that the parts affected green'd up later and seemed to handle the Summer better than the balance of my Bluegrass.   I was planning on doing a complete renovation in the back by killing EVERYTHING off and starting from scratch with a new layer of seed this Fall.  As I prepared for that, I went in to see if I could learn more about what was back there and how much I *really* needed to kill off vs. just overseed. When I went in and pulled a mature stalk of grass, I discovered it had this sort of horizontal branching structure. 

We have two Praying Hands hostas in our backyard shade garden.  They are both planted close to each other in the hosta bed underneath the large Northern Red Oak tree swing tree and tucked in amongst some other known varieties like Frances Williams and Christmas Tree as well as a bunch of other, unknown varieties - some variegated, some not.   I planted the first one of these in Fall of 2020 .  At some point, I acquired a second one.  I don't seem to have posted about this second planting, nor how I transplanted the first one, but those two things did, indeed happen.  I originally planted this back by the colony of Guacamole Hostas, but I moved it because there's a little path to a kids picnic table there and this was going to be trampled.   Here, below, is a look at both of them. First, the larger of the two.  I'm thinking this is the 2020 version below.  You can see ferns and other hostas in the photo.  As well as the tray of Kentucky Coffee tree seedlings that I have tuck

The last time I posted photos of the tray of Kentucky Coffee Tree Seedlings was in May of this year when they were just emerging from Winter dormancy and putting on some leaflets .   I overwintered this tray of native tree seedlings by digging them in the ground and wrapping chicken wire around the base to protect them from the dang rabbits.  That seemed to work.   I've kept all of the seedlings in their original small (quart) nursery containers so far and have put the tray underneath a large Oak tree to provide filtered light.  And...get them watered when I water the perennials in the area.  Here, below, is what the tray of seedlings look like in mid-August 2022: By my count, I see eleven small KCT seedlings.  And one Elm tree.  And some other weed. This is their second full growing season and they've all had their stems/trunks put on real wood.  They're all very small, still.  And...they seem to have outgrown their containers and have roots emerging from the bottom.  He

Yesterday, I posted a photo and an update on the line of three Hakonechloa Macra Hakone Japanese Forest Grasses that I have planted as a border under the tree swing Northern Red Oak tree in our backyard and remarked at how much size they had put on in just one year.   While I was over in that section of the garden, I grabbed a photo to document in the [ garden diary ] the current mid-Summer state of the stand of Hakonechloa macra All Gold Grasses that are planted right around 'the corner' from the other grasses. The last time that I posted a peek at these grasses was in this post about my Drumstick Allium .  But...the last time I posted the details of these grasses was just a week more than a year ago - August 2021 .   And... before that was when I planted three additional grasses in May of 2021 .   At that point, there were nine of these grasses planted in this slice of the garden.   By August, I had noted that there was one in decline and had eight remaining .  What do these

Right around Labor Day last year (2021), I planted a little cluster of three Hakonechloa Macra Hakone Grasses that I bought at Northwind in Wisconsin .  These were planted on the border of the north bed right around the Tree Swing Northern Red Oak tree.  They seemed to do fine during the Fall last year and then went dormant for the season.  This Spring, I marked their reemergence in May of this year and was happy to see them come back for their first true growing season in the garden.  What do they look like 11 months after their initial planting?  Here, below, is a photo showing how they've all put on size and are doing well in their spot.  The one furthest to the right is the smallest and is currently competing with a bunch of small Frances Williams hostas . I'm really liking these and think I can see even more of these repeated in a few spots.  They prefer shade, so I can't put them close to the house, but in the beds in the back, there's tons of room for a little p

 I've grown my lawn care practice in various ways over the years based on things I've learned from the Web (mostly YouTubers) including how I (now) cut my lawn pretty high (5 on the mower), have added Tall Fescue to our KBG lawn to try to provide it more heat resistance and even using a blue pattern spray in my herbicide treatments to 'see' where I've sprayed .  My most recent project is focused on controlling a new (to me) warm season weed grass called Nimblewill. In order to do that, I'm going to use a selective herbicide named Tenacity.  Tenacity seems like pretty great stuff and can be applied as either a pre-emergent or a post-emergent.  The difference is that you have to also use a surfactant if you're going the post-emergent route. For this Nimblewill control project, we're talking post-emergent and actively growing grass. That meant that I had to go find a surfactant.  The most readily available one was this Liquid Harvest version available on Am