Why I Oughta...

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/extend ex

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 flowers since last Fall - and pushed myself

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, like a bunch of the areas that I w

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 attempt to mix those biosolids with even mo

Just a week ago, I spotted some issues in the corner of our front porch bed .  It is a low-spot and because of that was taking on some water from the downspouts.  But, the front part of that bed was also showing some signs of turf coming back.  This was a small extension that I carved out of the lawn last year.  And...it turns out...I must not have pulled out/dug out all of the turf.   I decided to kill-two-birds in this project.  (Well...half of a project since I didn't have enough materials to finish it.) First, I laid down some cardboard to smother the grass.  I cut holes for the handful of tulips in the area, then spread out some thick, unpainted cardboard on top of the turf.  I then went back to the pile of topsoil and clay that I excavated from the Pizza Oven foundation and spread that on top of the cardboard.   I started by the property-line edge and went north.  Below are a few photos showing the progress - first with the cardboard and topsoil + clay.   I initially only di