Why I Oughta...

I saw this sign at Roy Diblik's Northwind Perennial Farm on the benches for a Lavender that is named Lavandula x Intermedia 'Phenomenal'.  Or...Phenomenal Lavender.  The description says:  "This is what all of us have been waiting for.  This lavendar will live through our heat and humidity, our cold winters.  It can grow everywhere."  Sounded like it was worth a shot, right?  Lavender is hard-to-grow and (from what I've read) likes to grow in hard-to-grow conditions.  Full Sun.  Low organic material.  Good drainage.   I have just the place.  My 'hard to grow' area down by the sidewalk.  It gets full sun and has some gravel in the soil.  And, is right next to the sidewalk, so it gets hot.   I bought a quart that had a small Lavender plant in it and got busy planting it down IB2DWs, down by the sidewalk:

Over the past week or so, I've been working on - and posting about - the front yard beds.  Mostly, I've been working on - and thinking about the soil conditions.  Since we moved in - Summer of 2017 - I haven't had much luck at all up there.  That's six growing seasons (well...five full ones at least) and I've lost things, have had other things not grow so well and removed the biggest plant in this bed last Fall:  the large Norway Maple tree.   I started last week doing some vertical boring of holes using my post hole digger .  Both, to get a real look at the soil conditions, understand how deep the clay lies under the topsoil and to (maybe?) help improve the conditions by cutting through some of that bathtub effect that takes place in clay soils.  After I dug a hole about 12" around and 24-or-so-inches deep, I proceeded to fill it up with some leaves and a big helping of biosolids to top it off.  My thought is that this 'vertical mulching' wi...

The planting bed that is out front of our porch has been something that has been on my mind for years.  Specifically...the growing conditions.  Between a few things going on out there, I think it might be time (this year) to take an even more aggressive stance at improving the soil across this foundation planting bed.  Last year (2022), one of the items on my annual to-do list was to think about how we improve the conditions up there and I suppose that I did that (a little) and gave myself a partial grade of complete.   The way I was thinking about this problem was across a couple of fronts:  hydrophobic mulch and the root mat from the Norway Maple .   Starting last Spring, I went about trying to fix the hydrophobic mulch issue - including the addition of some nitrogen in the form of alfalfa cubes and raked it in .  Then, in the Fall, I attempted to do even more.  First...with the removal and grinding of the Norway Maple tree, I'm hopin...