Why I Oughta...

Just about one year ago, I posted a photo here on the blog showing our first tulip bulb tip that had emerged from the mulch and signaled that Spring was this/close.  Today, I'm posting a similar photo of a tulip bulb tip in our front yard/front porch beds.  Last Fall, I planted 57 additional tulip bulbs - adding 28 yellow, 15 orange and 14 white flowers to our bed where we had our original 50 bulbs.  That makes the full count 107 bulbs, but we've certainly lost some to rot, critters or they have exhausted themselves.   The photo below, is taken a little bit away from the base of the Norway Maple where our legacy bulbs have historically been planted , so I'm thinking this is one of the newly planted ones.   If you've been following along over the years, you'll notice two additional things in the photo above. First, the mulch.  It is Cocoa Bean Hull mulch from the Hull Farm in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin .  I first picked up the idea at the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris w

Last month, I began to prep some parts of our yard for winter with the addition of chicken wire protection to keep the rabbits away from nibbling on the evergreens all Winter.  I started with the Canadian Hemlocks and also wrapped our Weeping White Spruce columnar tree , too.  In those posts, I mentioned that I was planning on trying to protect a couple of our Disneyland Roses using a similar technique - wrapping a ring of poultry netting around them - but this time, filling them with mass to protect from winter frosts. Below are a couple of photos that show the currents state of our two sideyard Disneyland roses.  First, the eastern-most one.  The chicken wire is wrapped around the rose and filled with mulched/chopped-up fall leaves to provide mulching protection.  I also threw down wood chips around the bottom to keep critters from getting inside:  The more western one - below - is the larger of the Disneyland roses.  This one, too, was wrapped in chicken wire and mulched from the b

Back in April, I posted about how I had started to go over to the Downers "mulch pit" with some buckets and my pitchfork and bringing home about 1/3rd of a yard of arborist wood chips a couple of times per week.  At that time, I was mostly stuck at home due to COVID, so I had the time.  And, I had a huge part of our far backyard that I had never mulched.  These wood chips seemed like a good idea to cover some of that soil, provide a little bit of mulch and potentially create a base upon which I could cover with higher quality mulch.   I ended up doing a big section across the back of my yard, but after getting that *mostly* done, Spring had arrived and I switched my attention to other parts of the yard.  I also had 12 yards of hardwood fines premium mulch delivered that covered the rest of my yard.  (Note to self:  12 yards wasn't enough for my yard.) Well...guess what?  COVID is still here. And I'm still *mostly* stuck around the house with time.  For me, A

Back in the end of June, I planted eight additional Summer Beauty Ornament Onion (allium) on the south side of our property in the bed that runs from east to west.  We picked them up (or...had someone picked them up) from Hinsdale Nursery and I put seven of them in a staggered planting.  When they went in, they were just green foliage, but today - if you look at the photo at the top of this post - you'll notice that they're all flowering some lovely purple sphere-shaped flowers.  Each of them have multiple flowers, but ALL of them are leaning to the East.  Looking at this photo, one thing that I'm noticing is that the mulch that I put down (delivered in mid-April this year) has already broken down quite a bit.  This area - and these Allium could use a mulch refresh.  That leads me to ask a question:  do gardeners mulch twice a year?  This post recommends both a Spring and Fall mulch ?  You should add mulch whenever layers thin out for any reason. You’ll also want

A couple of days ago, I posted a before/after photo of our Magnolia tree and the cocoa bean shell mulch that I added and mentioned that I had brought home just 10 bags of cocoa bean hull mulch from Lake Geneva.  Today, you can see our front bed with the balance of the bags laid down.  I was able to add mulch from the front of the bed to around and *just* behind the boxwoods.  We have three Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangeas behind the boxwoods that I didn't have enough mulch in the bags to cover at this point. From this point of view - and down lower near the sidewalk, you can't see *behind* the boxwoods, so it kind of looks finished despite about 50% of the bed not being freshly mulched. When we go back up to Wisconsin in the coming weeks/months when we drive two cars, I'll head over to the Hull Farm and pick up ten more bags of the stuff to finish off the bed. On the far left of the photo, you can see one of the limestone blocks that I installed to create that '

Yesterday, I posted a photo of the bags of Cocoa Bean Shell mulch that I picked in Wisconsin and mentioned that I was planning on using it in our front yard.  I got started with some of the trees in our front yard and will get the larger porch bed next.   Below, you can see the before picture of our front yard Saucer Magnolia tree.  I mulched this tree ring with Cocoa Bean Shell mulch last year, so this is about 11 months since last mulch application.   You can see some of the flowers that are still clinging to the Magnolia - as it flowered this year after skipping a year last year.   And...now below is the 'after' where I applied a layer of the cocoa bean shells to the tree ring: One of the things that you have to do is to 'water in' the mulch to kind of set it up and when you do that it darkens the cocoa bean shells little bit.  After I do a few more tree rings, I'll water this stuff in to set it. The cocoa bean shell mulch looks great from th

Once again, I'm going with Cocoa Bean Shell mulch in our front yard this year.  On a recent trip to Wisconsin, I stopped at the Hull Farm outside of Lake Geneva and bought ten bags.  They sell it for about 50% the cost of Menards, so buying direct is worth the trip if you are buying in bulk. We first saw the French using Cocoa Bean Shell mulch in the beds at Luxembourg Gardens in Paris last year and ever since, it has become something that I wanted to bring to our home garden.    Last year, I applied bags of the stuff to the front beds and around a couple of trees .  This year, I'm going to replicate that plan and use it just on the front yard beds - to keep the cost in control and to keep it away from Lizzie.  I'll post some photos of the beds once I put the cocoa bean shells (or hulls) down on top of the existing mulch/shells. There are a couple of things that I like about this particular kind of mulch including the 'mat' that gets created as a weed barrier

A couple of days ago, I posted a photo of some of our orange tulips blooming in the front yard and mentioned that in that photo there was a detail of a small (potentially partial) project that I had knocked off my list.  In the photo at the top you can see that project: a little buried flagstone retaining 'ledge'.   In mid-April, I posted about my 'floating mulch' problem in this area due to the grade (it is on a slope) and water run-off (some gutter downspouts come out in this area).   In that post, I speculated that if I dug-in some retaining blocks that I could keep the cocoa bean hull mulch from migrating too far into the lawn.  But, at the same time, I didn't want to make it super visible from down near the sidewalk.  What you see at the top of this post is my compromise.  I dug in the blocks a few inches and left them proud of the mulch by about 1/2" or so.   If you look at the photo below, you can get a better sense for how they look from a

Yesterday, I shared a video of our twelve yard mulch delivery and my plans to spread it around our property as part of my (new) social distancing project plans.  One of the areas that I mentioned in that post as a 'net new' bed was in the area by our tree swing - what I've billed as " Priority Area 2 " earlier this Spring.  Here's a new look at that area from our bedroom (zoomed in) that shows how I've take what was once a mulch island (just a ring of mulch around that big Oak) to more of a continuous bed. I took the tree ring - that you can mostly still see and extended the bed all the way to the right where one of our large Chanticleer Pear trees is located.  And to the left, I created a whole new bed that was a mix of thin grass, weeds and, frankly...leaf mulch.  Have a look at this post - featuring that River Birch behind the Oak tree - to see what I'm talking about.  This area was some grass, some weeds and never really defined in any way

Recently, we had twelve steaming yards of hardwood fines mulch delivered to our driveway from Best Firewood and Mulch - the same folks who deliver our firewood.  That's the delivery in the video at the top of this post showing the driver doing a little bit of 'jiggling' with his lifted bed to get all of the mulch to drop.  Nine years ago, I posted a similar video of ten yards of mulch that was dropped on our old driveway.  You can watch that video here .  This new mulch is destined for the beds that I pointed out in my recent garden tour post  and will fill in the spots between the front (where we're doing the cocoa bean hull mulch) and the far back (where I've been doing the wood chips from the Villag e). I have a seven cubic yard cart (wheelbarrow...but not a traditional wheelbarrow).  There are 27 cubic feet in a yard.  Let's figure that it takes four carts to get that yard.  Twelve x four per yard = 48 carts lugged into the back and side yard.  Ther

Our front yard is pitched from the house down to the street.  There's a significant grade difference between where our house sits and the curb such that our yard is on a slope and parts of our parkway are on a pretty severe slope.  But, so, too, are the beds in front and on side of our front porch.  You can kind of see/appreciate the grade difference in the photo above in this post. This is a profile view of the area that you can see in the photo on this tulip post from last year .  In that photo/post, you can see how the grade from about halfway back on the house all the way to the front of this bed is downhill.  But, it also slopes away from the foundation, too. This area is where I get the most erosion in any of the beds around our property.  We get rainwater erosion and plenty of floating mulch.  A couple of times a year, I break out the rake and pull the mulch back into the bed. Here's a post showing all the mulch in place .  If you look at the white boards on the

Well, that escalated quickly.  A little more than a week ago, I posted a photo showing the result of a five gallon bucket full of free wood chips/mulch from the Village of Downers Grove. Today, I've made 15 trips to what we're calling the 'mulch pit'.  I've gone all-in on the free wood chips/mulch for the very far back of our yard.  This is an area that I've done absolutely nothing to over the past few years and just let go natural. I've cobbled together a series of buckets, trugs and one garbage can that I believe - when filled - total about 9 cubic feet of mulch.  That's about 1/3rd of a yard each trip.  15 trips = 5 yards.  I'm not quite 50% of the way done across the back of the yard, but with the social distancing being extended for another 30 days, that means that I might be able to get the far backyard covered in this weed barrier before I end up getting back to the office.   I figure that I'll need about 20 more trips to get all the

Maybe it is this whole social distancing exercise and the idea of being cooped up for who knows how long.  Or maybe it is just the weather turning a little bit nice that has me thinking more and more about getting our yard in shape.  Either way, it has me turning my thoughts to mulch.  In the past, we've had our mulch delivered and spread by pros, but we haven't done the full yard.  I mean...we have a BIG yard to mulch and we've really only done the little bit in the front plus a little bit around the house/beds that were already created and planted.  That left the back 2/3rds of the yard with what I'd loosely call 'beds' around the perimeter of the back of the yard.  They haven't been tended to at ALL in terms of grooming and mulching with hardwood mulch (or fines).  I have, however, been taking my lawnmower and mulching up the Fall leaves and piling them up in the beds around the back as a Knowing that we might be hanging around the house A LOT more h

The very first tips of some of our Spring bulbs have started to poke through the mulch.  This is a tulip bulb in our front beds that are covered with cocoa bean hull mulch.  Which...now that I'm looking at this photo - sure looks pretty great.  The cocoa bean mulch is a rich, dark brown and composed of small flakes that are both breaking down, but not disappearing.  Compare the color to the few pieces of bark/wood that are in the bed and you can see how the color is much deeper in the cocoa bean mulch. These bulbs are the same ones that I documented last Spring - but later in March . One of the biggest problems that I have this time of year in this area is keeping these from getting stepped on.  This bed is in between our house and the neighbors whom the girls spend time with.  It is easy to trample these tips if they're not careful.  These are the red and orange tulips that I told myself I needed to augment with yellow .  But...I didn't end up doing it last year.

'Tis the season for fireplace burning in our house - and likely in yours.  That means that you'll have to deal with the ash that gets left behind after the wood burns.  We burn hardwoods exclusively (so far this year, we've burned Cherry and Birch) and that means we end up with hardwood ash.  Turns out, it has value in the garden as a soil conditioner and fertilizer.    According to the Oregon State University (Notice...I did include *the* for those other OSU lunatics) Extension office , hardwood ash can aid in making the soil an environment that supports plant and tree growth.  From the OSU Extension article : Because wood ash is derived from plant material, it contains most of the 13 essential nutrients the soil supplies for plant growth, according to Dan Sullivan, OSU Extension soil scientist.  "When wood burns, nitrogen and sulfur are lost as gas," Sullivan said, "but calcium, potassium, magnesium and other trace elements remain. The carbonates a

On one of our visits to Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, we came across a crew installing some flower beds in the main area that is just north of the little circular pond where kids launch those sail boats.  You can see that they're using this white fabric template to put down flowers in a pattern, but you can also see that on the right of this photo, they use the template to just make outlines.  After that, they fill them in with (usually) one color.  As this was happening, we stopped to take it and looked around at some of their stuff.  One thing that I saw that grabbed my attention was their use of cocoa bean hulls as mulch.  They had bags of the stuff lined up ready to be installed after the flowers go in.  I had come across Cocoa Bean Hull Mulch in bags at Menards, but didn't give it much thought.  Until now.  After we came home, I went off to Menards and picked up a bag of the stuff to see what it was all about.  Of note, Cocoa Bean Shell Mulch is toxic to dogs .  Just l

Mulch delivered, installed and spread for the year:  Done and Done.  Here's the post (with the same title) from 2011 including a video of the steaming pile being dumped on our driveway in Elmhurst.  Here's the post from 2013 showing our (then) beds being freshly mulched.  And here's the post from 2015 .  Weird that I posted them every two years, despite mulch being applied every year.   But, in that post from 2015 , you can see some of yard that I had worked at for six years to get it to a place that I was starting to be happy with in terms of plants and landscape.  We had daylilies, some HUGE stands of Ostrich Ferns, a happy bunch of variegated hostas, a really beautiful (if just for a week or so) crabapple tree, a Ginko tree, an out-of-control Pussy Willow and even a fruiting Pear tree all in that one shot .  I took the photo above in this post from our front porch and it shows three of our Strawberry Vanilla Hydrangeas and six of our Green Velvet Boxwoods.  The

The mulch is all spread out and set up in the front, back and sideyards.  Nothing looks (or smells!) better than day one of new mulch in your landscape beds.  Seven yards of the stuff this year.  There's a bunch of grades of mulch and for the first time we went a click up the chart from mid-grade to one higher.  Not quite the most premium stuff, but better than the grade of mulch we normally get which contains some larger chips and not as fine. Here's the post from 2013 featuring the mulch. And here's the post - and video - of the mulch arriving back in 2011 .

We had 7.5 yards of mulch put down in our beds yesterday and I'll tell you that there's nothing better looking than a freshly mulched yard.  It makes the our plants look healthier, our shrubs look bigger, and even makes the spots on our grass look a lot less barren. This year, we got the mulch in a lot earlier than in 2012.   It wasn't until mid-July until we had mulch last year .   As I noted last year, I was about 2 months behind the neighborhood schedule, so I think we're right on track this time around.  At least now Nat will be able to pull out of our garage without our neighbors frowning at her.  (I'm kidding!  Our neighbors don't frown at us because of the mulch....it is more about when they see me gardening/mowing the grass in my socks/sandals garb.)

10 steaming yards of it delivered on the driveway.   Our beds are going to be soooo happy.