While I didn't finish the ornamental grasses in front (yet), I also moved on to a different spot: the raised vegetable bed on our back patio. Just like the grasses, this bed had some stems and seed heads that I left behind from last season's plants. Tomato bushes. Herb stems.
I took my pruners to those and cut them up into small segments. And left them on the top of the bed. You can see the 'chopped' mulch in the two photos below. I typically top this bed with a couple of bags of compost and/or mushroom compost, so this plant litter will get incorporated into the soil later this Spring.
Here, below, is a closer look at some of the stems. These are 'woody' for the most part, so I cut them down to about 1/2" pieces so they'll decompose a little bit faster than they normally would if left larger.
I'm not a pro when it comes to 'mulching in place', but I'm using it more-and-more each season. Here's a video from the Royal Horticultural Society that talks about using the 'chop and drop' method (embedded below):
They talk about how you shouldn't use the chop and drop for every perennial in the garden and call out hostas, specifically, as one you should compost during your clean-up. There's a bit in the video that explains monocot plants (like Hostas) that have a parallel vein structure (vs. dicots that have veins that are more 'net-like'). Monocots break down, they create 'fiber-y structures' with 'mushy material'.
The exception that the RHS calls out are ornamental grasses. Huzzah!
The benefits of chop-and-drop clean-up (per the RHS) include: soil enrichment (the cut-up bits are organic matter), is easy (no hauling away to compost bin), is natural (mimics what happens in nature), is good for critters (the cuttings feed the soil which feeds critters) and they end by saying..."if done properly"...it can "still look really great".
The time has come for the backyard Fall lawn project. What I thought was going to be a total renovation - killing everything and seeding from scratch - has turned into a combination of patch seeding and total overseeding in a couple of ways. Once I was able to positively identify that I had an infestation of Nimblewill (a warm-season bent grass), I opted for a selective treatment called Tenacity. After a couple of applications, the spray began to work and has turned the tips of the Nimblewill white as it begins to kill it off . The killing and eradication of the Nimblewill isn't going to be done in this one season, but rather will be a multi-year program. But, with the application of Tenacity (while the Nimblewill is/was growing ), I think I've begun to defeat it. And allow for the application of a new batch of grass seed that will (I hope) take off and begin to grow in the final six or so weeks of the season. The backyard is a case study...
In our indoor container garden collection, we have a few succulents that we've picked up over the years including the Burro's Tail that I bought home from the office and (just last week) began the process of planting some cuttings. Upstairs, in the sunniest spot, we also have a container of Firesticks Cactus that I planted in 2018 . I managed to drag that Firesticks outside last Summer and then back in before Fall and it seems to have thrived the past year or two. It is pretty big and likely in need of a new container. But, more on that succulent in a separate post. This is about a new (to us) succulent that I picked up recently at Home Depot. It was a $3.98 2.5" plastic nursery pot that has these plump, crinkle-ended leaves/lobes. For now, I decided to just leave the Key Lime Pie succulent in the plastic nursery pot and stuck it inside a larger, terra cotta container that doesn't (currently) have a hole punched out of the bottom, but appears t...
A few days ago, I received a new comment from a reader of my garden diary on this post all the way back in late May 2018 titled: " Frans Fontaine Hornbeam Planted - Hedgerow Spring 2018 ". That post shows the eight columnar European Hornbeam trees that had been delivered and were being planted in our back and side yard to create (at that time, what I hoped to be) a privacy screen. The comment - from JennyW - is here below: I've talked this before, but I write this daily online diary because I get joy out of doing it. I don't run advertisements. I don't run sponsored content. I also write for a pretty narrow audience - mostly myself. I also look at the analytics data and know that there are really three audiences - in declining size order: 1. The largest part of the audience: (mostly) one-time search readers (they search for something, click on the link and end up at my blog). 2. Second biggest audience: Referral....
Comments
Post a Comment
Be nice to each other here.