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...

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...

Last Fall, when I was digging up/out the (extended) IB2DWs bed for the small conifer garden along the property line, I turned to a mix of grass-removal techniques.  The whole area was turf, so I did three things:  Dug it out, smothered it/covered it up and flipped it over (and smothered it).   For the material that I excavated, I brought most of it over to the southside of the house and used it to fill in the little gully/swale on the side of the house.  And, I tucked in a bunch of it (flipped over) along the side of the porch where I'd seen some erosion over the years.  On this side of the house, we have just ONE downspout that handles a big portion of the roof and when it gets clogged up, that gutter 'tops'.  That's one source of the erosion.  The other is the downspout outlet.  Whatever *does* get down the downspout, comes out one of those surface drains.    That 'flipped' turf was a way to raise the ground-level here.  And,...