What Did You Do In The Garden?

[flowerbug]

Oh that is a great find! Lol Hope that groundhog continues to leave them alone. Hey if they produce for you, save seed and maybe next year you can plant them all around that area and plant the mallow and soybeans inside there. Ok, probably wouldn't work.

Mary

the mallow is not wanted there, but it drops so many seeds that these are sprouting from plants that were there several years ago. they've not been allowed to bloom or set seeds since then, but it will be a while before those seeds are exhausted from the soil seed bank.

the deer have eaten mallow when it is grown outside the fence, but i didn't think groundhogs would go for it. so now that i know that i'll stop letting it drop seeds inside the fenced gardens too. i don't want to attract any more animals in any way if i can help it...

if i get any fruit at all it will be really fun - all of the reviews of this melon on-line i found when i checked out how to plant the seeds said it was really good. so i'm trying to be patient and hopeful here.

 

[Trish Stretton]

For the last 3 days, I have been putting the pavers in place around the lawn to act as a mowing strip and trying to level the ground. So far,one whole side has the pavers in place....then I realised that the timber edging didnt extend right to the end, so I had to stop and think about what i was going to do about this. I didnt want a 2 foot bit stuck on the end. Finally, I realised that I will have to divide that side in half to make it more symmetrical. I will have to wait til next week to buy more timber...meanwhile, back to the levelling.
This used to be a perfectly flat lawn, I have no idea why or how it got so lumpy bumpy.
A few more days should see it nice, flat and level again.
I'll take some pics tomorrow.

 

[seedcorn]

Weeding, weeding, weeding. Every day, new grass shows up.....I hate crab grass....

 

[Prairie Rose]

Lots of weeding here too. Have a few more discount perennials to put in the ground today, and a houseplant in a broken pot to take care of. Maaaybe bee hive inspection, if the breeze dies down a little...it's just a little too windy to smoke the hive well at the moment.

 

[digitS']

@Trish Stretton are you leaving any lawngrass in place while leveling? No, not @seedcorn 's crab grass.

My yard sure isn't level and seems to become worse each year. It isn't very noticeable when the grass is growing and "softening" the lines. Maybe Engineer @Ridgerunner would call it elevations.

Ridge' has suggested using soil to fill in low spots. I have done some of that but imagine that it would take a pickup truck load of soil to make much of a difference.

It's probably mostly a traffic problem here and I don't know what the bluegrass think of having 2 or 3 inches of soil raked over it and then walked on. I MUST do this filling again at the foot of the backsteps. It seemed to be okay with the grass before but it was more like an inch and a half that I raked over it. Then, Skippy decided not to step on it for about a month while not daring to make that suggestion to DW.

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

Down here on reclaimed swamp land it's pretty standard that every few years you get a load of spillway dirt (sand) to level out your lawn. For various engineering/physics reasons it can get pretty rough. I have not done that here yet, I just moved here two years ago. In a former location with a much bigger yard I'd get 6 to 8 cubic yards or spillway dirt every four years or so, wheelbarrow that to spread it, then rake it out. That's not a pickup truck load Steve, that's a dump truck. Not sure how big your yard is. Trish's either for that matter. Even with a layer of sand 2" thick in the low spots it didn't take that long for the grass to take back over. Not in this climate.

 

[flowerbug]

try to roll it and then aerate it. i think that's a lot easier than bringing in more fill and all the raking. now is probably not the best time to do that, but once it cools down in the fall it would probably be ok.

i've seen bumps come from grass kind of clumping together, some weeds do that too, then moles, ants and erosion washing any topsoil away if there is any slope involved.

 

[Prairie Rose]

I went out and finished the weeding before it started raining, got the last of my newest plants in the ground, and potted a few of the houseplants that needed some attention today.

 

[digitS']

This is my 50:50 gravel to dirt soil that I'm talking about. But, I can see that some serious attention is needed.

It's difficult for me to imagine that rolling it without first tilling would move it a fraction of an inch. Adding sand to gravel may be okay. What the Hay? I try my best to keep organic material ON the lawn while maintaining good growth with the grass, year in year out.

My mobile lawn sprinkler set up with 3 sprinklers on 8' pvc pipes are what I chase around the yard several hours, a couple of times/week. They generally lie flat but where the community water line enters from the road, I have to stabilize the pipe with 2 bricks. Well before I arrived here 25 years ago that water line was dug. I didn't notice any depression then (except with the concrete sidewalk, but that's another story). I bet that the middle of that 8' pipe when I set it there is 3" below the ends - so that's a 3" drop in 4'. I have to do something.

I think DD has plans to buy an aerator for her much-larger, newly sodded, lawn. I wonder if that would help if I utilized that with great vigor everywhere on the lawn. I bet that even if displaced, every single grass plant would have an excellent change of survival in our typical spring weather .

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

This is my 50:50 gravel to dirt soil that I'm talking about. But, I can see that some serious attention is needed.

It's difficult for me to imagine that rolling it without first tilling would move it a fraction of an inch. Adding sand to gravel may be okay. What the Hay? I try my best to keep organic material ON the lawn while maintaining good growth with the grass, year in year out.

My mobile lawn sprinkler set up with 3 sprinklers on 8' pvc pipes are what I chase around the yard several hours, a couple of times/week. They generally lie flat but where the community water line enters from the road, I have to stabilize the pipe with 2 bricks. Well before I arrived here 25 years ago that water line was dug. I didn't notice any depression then (except with the concrete sidewalk, but that's another story). I bet that the middle of that 8' pipe when I set it there is 3" below the ends - so that's a 3" drop in 4'. I have to do something.

I think DD has plans to buy an aerator for her much-larger, newly sodded, lawn. I wonder if that would help if I utilized that with great vigor everywhere on the lawn. I bet that even if displaced, every single grass plant would have an excellent change of survival in our typical spring weather .

Steve

it makes no sense to aerate a lawn that drains well. i should have thought of that for your particular case. :/ rolling too. :/