'Hell strip' makeover

Landscaping the 'Hell strip'

One of my gardening projects has been to remove the grass from the front yard. While it looks lovely when the grass is green, summer turns the grass a dried-out brown.  There are many great ideas on the internet about landscaping with little to no grass. 

 

 Goal: 

Transform that awkward strip between the sidewalk and the road (aka the hell strip) by planting drought tolerant plants, creating areas to place the garbage cans, and using a visually interesting design.

Warning: getting rid of the grass is a time-consuming, sore-muscles project.  We decided not to go for the larger dumpster (costly) and have relied weekly on the kind neighbors who have let us use their yard waste bins.  Our strip is 50ft long and 3.5 ft wide.  It may not seem like much but each week it took 3 bins to remove a 3-4ft x 3.5 foot section.  The bins get too heavy to move if there is more!

Process:

1. Search the internet for ideas!
2. Measure the strip area
3. Draw up a yard plan with potential ideas and shapes
4. Start removing the grass
5. Determine what areas are going to be for garbage cans
6. Pay neighbor to bring all the remaining rocks to the front yard from previous pond area in back
7. Get supplies as needed
8. Start putting in the design
9. Look at it from all angles, look some more, move plants around, look at it lots more, wave back at the drivers who are watching you work.

Supplies:

1. High quality barrier fabric. Don't stint on this, most fabrics in hardware stores only last a year if that.
2. garden or landscape staples - again, be aware that there are poor quality ones out there. My first ones started rusting with just brief exposure to the air, the second batch - much better!
3. rock and more rock
4. bark (purchased bulk by the sq yard)
5. garden soil (purchased bulk by the sq yard)
6. mint mulch for color contrast (and it smells so good too!)
7. plants - mostly they were transplanted from other locations in the yard.

Ordered from www.amazon.com

Sandbaggy 500-Count Landscape Staples ~ SOD Staples, Garden Stakes, Square Pins
Dewitt 3-by-100-Feet 4.1-Ounce 20-Year Weed Barrier Fabric  

There is still a good 15 feet to finish but it should be fun.

I hope this inspires you!

Burlap for seed starting and groundcover - Excellent!

Burlap

I love to walk out into the garden every day wandering around and watching the plant growth. Is it small, large, a sudden burst? How did the weather affect it? what about the techniques I'm trying?  I recently experimented with loosely woven burlap to cover a mammoth crimson clover ground cover group.  it worked wonderfully!  The next step is to determine how much will get eaten by garden pests.  I have sprinkled a layer of straw over it as well as slug bait and finally some diatomaceous earth (but with the rain heading my way the last isn't likely to last long.)  I've had to re-apply the slug bait once more since the original planting back in March and have added other areas of clover.

Mammoth Crimson Clover as cover crop

 These tiny seeds were simply scattered rather randomly over the barely worked earth that had been partially prepped last year (see previous blog re: no till earth prep)  You can see that it has taken well.  I wet down it down after planting, it rained about 36 hours later and a nice green carpet has emerged.  The burlap I have has a tighter weave unsuited once the seeds are up. The Burlap should be pulled up once sprouting has begun to prevent damaging seedlings by either crushing them underneath or pulling them out when it's removed.

 Wonderful!  Not only will the clover add Nitrogen to the soil but it will be lovely when it blooms. As you can see from the photos below, there have been been big changes since last year and the the clover is coming in well.

Now that the clover is in, I'm re-using the Burlap as a basic mulch and for Basil seedling germination. It worked very well with annual/perennial flower seeds now starting to bloom. Basically,  I highly recommend Burlap as a starter for seed!

In-ground firepit design update

Designing around the firepit...

Last year I was so excited that I had been able to add sod around the firepit!  My vision was a soft, green walkable surround. This sadly, did not quite work as planned.  It seems sometime over the winter the sod got infested with grubs (gross!) and just started dying out.  Sigh.  So I started looking online and decided to go with a rock design (see earlier post).

It has taken about 6 months to finally put in the 1st rock but I am thrilled with the preliminary results.  All stone is from http://www.pacificstonescape.com/home.

The divider is a great product that I have used all over my yard called Easyflex No-Dig Edging. It's available at most major stores and Amazon but you will need additional spikes or garden anchor staples.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKqVc8lApsk

I encourage you to let your creativity out!

Reflecting back on 2014 and looking forward - Happy 2015!

Looking backward and forward

2014 has been a year of big changes. We are already planning the changes for 2015 and 2016. They are going to be fun!

 Despite the freezing temps (it was 21 degrees last night), I was working on extending the bark path to the circle planter.  It also seems that my adventure with sod and grass transplants has not turned out as well as I has hoped.  One portion of the sod has sunk rather badly (this is likely because it is over an area of pond fill) and the section of transplants has just not taken. Instead we are planning to take it out and put in a colored stone design mixed with walkables like scotch moss.  This weekend I'm going out with the ladder to take photos then transfer to tracing paper and start laying out the patterns. 

These are designs called PEBBLE MOSAICS.  I'm not going to go this fancy since it requires mortar but aren't they lovely? They are great inspiration!

This year should see the addition of trees and bushes to the backyard as well as some type of fruit - perhaps grapes or even Hardy Kiwi?
  

We are also going to put in a green house to the west and south of the water barrels. This means moving the raised beds (and soil) and enlarging the area currently designated as the primary garden area (this area is currently having the soil prepped.)

I love this house!  But I'm also interested in building one with what is called a cold sink. (see image below) Rather than soil on the north wall like pictured below, it would be water barrels and bubble wrap and whatever else I can scout out on the internet.
Whatever we choose, it's going to have to be custom  shaped to accommodate the space. It is likely to look a bit like an "L" lying on it's side.



I hope that all of you have great plans for 2015 and will enjoy all the changes that the year will bring.

Happy Gardening!