Why I Oughta...

Having used biosolids to topdress the front parkway and a little bit of my lawn out front, I have now moved on to adding a bit of this organic material to our backyard.  This comes after I used the Downers Grove municipal biosolids in vertical mulching and by adding a little bit to our compost bin.   I've gone back-and-forth on whether (or not) to order a 3 yard delivery of biosolids, but in the meantime I've been going over to the pick-up station and filling 12 gallons-or-so of the material to use a little bit at a time.   As for the backyard, here's a few photos showing how I started with 10 gallons of biosolids as a soil amendment.   Below, you can see the 2 buckets and the trug - as well as the rake I use to spread it around.  I take each bucket and walk around and sort-of 'drizzle' the biosolids out.  You can see how that gets applied in the second photo below.  This is when I use that metal rake to pull it out of the piles and spre...

Earlier this Spring, I was concerned about our lone Totem Pole Switch Grass because it didn't seem to show any growth.  Turns out, it is a slow-starter.  Here's a post from mid-May when it had just started to emerge for the first time about three or four weeks behind other ornamental grasses .  One month later, the grass is above my knees and is putting out some serious blades.  No seed tips (just yet), but plenty of greenish-blue ornamental grass blades.  See below for the current state: This is planted behind the troubled Norway Maple and seems to have figured out how to co-exist with some hard-to-grow conditions: a dense root mat from the Norway Maple tree + clay soil + hydrophobic mulch + quite a bit of sun + mostly drought(ish) conditions.   Last Summer this put out seeds head by August, but has YET to reach the claimed heights of six feet .