Why I Oughta...

One of my 2026 to-do items is to 'expand the beds in Fall'.  I say 'Fall' because of how I utilize what I call the "lazy method" of smothering out the turf with cardboard.  That means that in addition to materials like cardboard and municipal biosolids, I need time.  Time for the grass to die.  Time for the cardboard to breakdown.  And time for the biosolids to MELLOW OUT.   Last year, I missed the Fall window to do some bed extensions, so I started to do them this Spring.  The first one was a few weeks ago with the Island Bed taking on new edges .  I used cardboard, municipal biosolids and composted manure to create a blend that I'll plant up (and mulch) later this Spring.  In the sideyard, I want to do the same thing:  expand the beds along the foundation to be more proud of the house.  Last year, I planted out the Dahlias in late May/early June.  I like to have about six weeks of time between laying down these bed exten...

Yesterday I posted my annual to-do list of 25 items I'm aiming to tackle this growing season .  I'm starting off with an early win by taking-on Priority item #2 on the list one-day-in.  I've talked about how I've adopted what I call the 'lazy bed extension method' of using three factors:  1.  Cardboard to smother the existing turf grass. 2.  A mix of (municipal) biosolids, leaf litter and composted manure + topsoil. 3.  Time. That 3rd factor (time) is why I'm going at this garden upgrade in March.   Here's what I wrote for #2: 2. Priority Project 2:  Expand and fix the edges of the front yard island bed .  But, use a ‘fewer curves’ approach to making a curvilinear shape . Last year, I planted Coleus (which was great) and Supertunias (which weren’t), so strike the right balance between colorful annuals (maybe mirror what I put in the front porch bed) along with some coleus for foliage. I also included further down the list at #12 a "Fall ...

Yesterday, I posted a 'garden dreaming' post about building a new, raised bed section in our backyard to grow even more vegetables and flowers.   And, right before the new year, I posted by 2025 to-do list scorecard .  I bring both of those posts up because they are both involved in this post about lazy beds.   First, the scorecard .  I graded myself 18/25, but one of the seven incompletes was #23 - "More Lazy Bed Extensions" and I mentioned in the post that I have reserved the right to update my scorecard total if I get these bed extensions done before the end of January.   Time is important on these lazy bed extensions as we need time to suppress the turf that exists, 'melt away' the cardboard and allow the biosolids to mellow out a little bit.  I've done them in the Fall and the beds were ready come Spring.  And, I've done some on a quicker turnaround.   If I get these done in January, I'll have 120ish days of cure time....

I've mentioned that Winter snow came early this year and that cut-short some of my typical garden cleanup. It also dropped most of the leaves on the Frans Fontaine Hornbeams that normally hang around all Winter.   And, those two things - snow packing down and leaves falling - has created a full bed of leaf litter at the feet of the Hornbeams.  Below is a photo showing the fallen leaves that have been matted-down by the heavy snow (that has since melted).   Just in FRONT of these trees is the newly-expanded Pizza Oven bed.  That bed is full of clay soil. One of the things I've been talking about doing this Winter is amending the clay soil to make it a little bit more hospitable to gardening next year - especially with more dahlias on their way.   My first thought was to utilize municipal biosolids and just pile it ON TOP OF THE CURRENT MULCH.  But, now, seeing this leave litter, I'm thinking that I should try to rake it up on top of the clay b...

Two days ago, I posted some photos showing the first step in the 'lazy bed extension' around our island bed in the front yard .  This was one of my priority projects for the year - #3.  I started with laying down cardboard to smother out the grass along the driveway.  That section went about twelve feet by three-feet wide.   For step two in this process, I went with filling-in the stretch of grass between the sidewalk back to the (current) island bed.  This section is about five-feet deep by twelve feet long.  I laid down two layers of cardboard with a slight overlap (both overlapped between the two of them and overlapped with the first layer on the driveway side).  I wet it down with the hose.  Then, topped with municipal biosolids.  And, finally...a layer of other organic yard material (leaves, grass clippings, etc) on top.  I mixed those together and used my hose again to wet it all together.   Below are a couple of sho...

A couple weeks ago, I posted a Fall project that I called "Lazy Garden Bed Extensions" where I first used my mower to scalp some turf followed by laying down cardboard to extend the front border of the front porch bed out a little bit.  On top of that cardboard went biosolids and compost followed by some wood mulch (from a big box store) that I had on hand.  I didn't do the full front porch bed border (then), but recently....I was able to get around and finish the entire border. I ended up extending the front porch border out by 18-inches or so out from where the French Marigolds were planted this season.  You can see the in the photo below the new edge of the bed is now stretching out a bit into the grass.  If you look closely, you can see the Marigolds (in decline) and the lone Dusty Miller (this is year 3 for that "annual"), so that gives you a sense of the new extension. I also found a couple of other spots where the bed was 'too small' for the plan...

In October of 2021, I bought and planted a single Shenandoah Red Switchgrass down by the sidewalk - IB2DWS .  It was an end-of-the-season #FallPlanting purchase and I put it in that spot because the description said that Panicum are well-known for being 'drought tolerant' .  This was a VERY hard-to-grow spot with harsh conditions:  hot concrete on two sides, competitive mature tree roots and gravely soil.   It went in and hasn't done super well, but...persisted.  There's something to be said for persisting in a spot like this was planted.   In the years since, I've left it alone.  But, as I've learned over the years, ornamental grasses need to be tended-to and do well to be divided every few years.  They will end up with 'center rot' and will get rejuvenated when they're divided.  I've typically done my ornamental grass dividing in the Fall, so this past weekend, I decided to divide a few - starting with this Shenandoah Switch Grass...

Over the years, I've created and expanded garden beds using various methods including digging out all the turf, flipping the turf and (more recently) doing some combination of digging/flipping the turf and layering on cardboard to supress the grass.  That cardboard smothering method seems to work pretty well and it is well...easy.  At least it is FAR easier than digging out the turf.  But, the cardboard method has a big drawback - the grass is *STILL THERE*.  So, that means it is tricky to plant in the bed immediately. If you plant in the cardboard zone, you have be careful to remove the turf around any 'holes' in the cardboard that you want to plant in - otherwise you'll end up with grass peeking through around the stems/trunks of whatever you plant.  Trust me...I know.   My problem is that I don't plan ahead enough and get the beds ready BEFORE I want to plant them.  So, why shouldn't I use some of this "Fall Planting" time to build out new/exte...

Back on July First, I posted the details of a new (to me) Northern Glow Korean Maple tree that I planted in our front yard in a newly created island bed.  I tucked it in next to our third Spring Grove dwarf Ginkgo tree.  Planting a new tree in the middle of the summer Summer is always a risk - with the heat and drought conditions that usually occur around here in Zone 6a/5b.   But, I learned last year that some shade cloth (50%) is a pretty good path towards helping young, dwarf trees get established during the heat of July and August.  So, that's what I did:  I put up a shade cloth covering both the Ginkgo and the Northern Glow Korean Maple .  With the cloth down at the end of August, I've begun to provide supplemental water to both of these small trees.  And, what I'm seeing on the Maple is a surprise (to me):  new, late-Summer foliage growth.  There are a handful of new buds that have emerged on some of the tips of the tree and some n...

Last Fall, I planted a three-pack of Penstemon Midnight Masquerade in the conifer garden IB2DWs and talked about how I needed to keep going (out of my comfort zone) with flowers.  There was a lot to like about these perennials - they're drought tolerant, can handle heat and humidity, full of dark foliage and bloom purple and white flowers.  When I bought them, they were past bloom-time, so that flower part was taken on faith. This Spring, I marked their reemergence for their first Spring in early April when new foliage clumps came back from dormancy .   I topped this part of the bed with some big box mulch (not leaf mulch...) and mostly moved on in the gardening season.  Until this week.  When these things started to bloom.   Have a look at my three one-year-old Midnight Masquerade Penstemons ( or Beardtongue ) with their showy light purple and white clusters of flowers: This spot is full sun and is part of what I've always called the 'hard to gr...

The southside sideyard of our property is like most suburban sideyards.  Long and narrow.  It is also one of the very few areas outside of our front yard where we get A LOT of sun.  Over the years, I've planted some things over there including three Disneyland Roses , a pair of espaliered Sugar Tyme Crabapple trees , some Summer Beauty Allium, Karl Foerster Grasses, a few various allium bulbs, our Indiana Street Iris  and last Fall I added a small Blue Star Juniper .  Closer to the front of the house, we have a pair of Limelight Hydrangeas that are adjacent to the porch. The bed along this side of the house has been the same size since we moved in:  long and thin and hugging the foundation.  Something about 18" wide.  Below is a photo showing the bed as it looked before I started this new bed project.  One other note (to future Jake) - the orange spray paint shows where the cable line is buried.   I've been talking about growing flo...

The pink tulip bulbs that are planted down close to the sidewalk IB2DWs are up and showing out this week with blooms that are opening up.  This area was grass until September of 2021, when I declared this a 'hard-to-grow' spot that wasn't supporting turf.  Between the poor soil conditions (clay + gravel from the driveway and sidewalk installation) plus the heat that radiates from those during the Summer made this an inhospitable spot that held Kentucky Bluegrass turf that ALWAYS went dormant during the heat of the Summer.  Look back here for a photo of this section when it was grass .  In the Fall of 2021, I planted a number of tulip bulbs down by the sidewalk and they had their first Spring in 2022 .  That makes this (2024), their third year of blooms. That same Fall (2021), I added an ornamental grass - Panicum Shaenandoah Red Switchgrass in that same bed that has come back each season.  Last Fall, I planted a pair of variegated sedums - Sedum Kamtschat...

This photo below is of a small corner of a lawn that sits between hardscape and is notoriously hard-to-grow-in.  It is also in the crotch of a driveway - which means that it gets driven-on from time-to-time.  That causes compaction and both a drop in the level of the soil AND a deterioration of the grass.   Last Summer, I filled the area with municipal biosolids.  Have a look at what the area looks like in early Spring - and compare it visually to the rest of the turf. The green-up difference is striking, no?   Biosolids.  Plus...(I presume) the warm-up that comes from the driveway retaining heat = a happy turf.

Earlier in March, I posted the details of a partial project in our front-porch bed that included the application of some cardboard to smother turfgrass that has crept into the bed .  I laid down cardboard, the topped with with a mix of clay, topsoil and biosolids.  I still need to finish the rest of that bed. But, in the meantime, I also applied the same treatment to a couple of spots in the expanded IB2DWs bed.  Last Fall, I carved out some new beds and removed SOME turf.  Turns out, I left behind A LOT of it, so...cardboard was the play here.   I did this in two spots - closer to the Bald Cypress - 'above' the first Baby Blue Spruce.  Then, again, closer to the sidewalk by the other Baby Blue Spruce tree.   Below are a some photos showing the post-cardboard + top soil + biosolids application.  There's still more grass to smother in this bed, but this is a good start: I used topsoil, clay and then a big batch of biosolids.  In an a...