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".
We were at the Menards in Bolingbrook and wandered out to where they keep the bags of lawn fertilizer. I was hoping to pick up a few bags of fertilizer and pre-emergent that I could put down late this Winter/early this Spring. As I've talked about over the years, I've evolved in my approach to feeding our lawn. When I started....I was all synthetic. I used the four-step program - all synthetics and some with weed/feed combined. Then...my eyes were opened (thanks to YouTube) on organics. Specifically Milorganite. I started to use biosolids. And, I stopped early Spring feedings. And, did a late season (Thanksgiving) feeding. And 'spoon fed' during the warm months and all of those things that people talk about online. Starting last year, I've kind of swung back on the synthetic --> organic spectrum. But, only half-way. I'll post about what I'm doing with the first application in another post....
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...
September is a good time to divide some perennials in our growing zone - 5b - due to the cooler temperatures, the little bit of rain we get and the warm soil temperatures. I have a few plants in our garden that were planted in 2017 that haven't been divided to date - so that's five growing seasons without dividing. And, when it comes to some ornamental grasses, it seems that they do BEST when you divide them every three or four years. My Fall dividing plan starts with these Karl Foerster grasses that were planted next to our driveway and our front way. I just posted a photo of these grasses last week showing the trio of them being full and wide . That's about their total, mature size. Coupled with the fact that I noticed some 'center rot' this Spring , I knew it was time to dig these out and divide. I started with the grass closest to our garage - you can see it on the right in the photo below: I dug it up and divided it into quarter...
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