Weekend Update April 13&14 – garden clean-up and a strawberry cage
This weekend we relaxed in the glory that is having walls in our house.  Since the drywall isn’t done, we were a bit stalled on the bathroom project which is the next big thing to get finished, the only thing is that the space needs cleaning, we have to hire the Houston Pressure Washing services first.
We did get a little work done here and there. Â We raked and mowed the lawn really well and then over-seeded. Â We pulled a full wheelbarrow of thatch from the lawn
It’s still rather lumpy but after talking with some landscapers, it’s going to be prohibitively expensive to get it roto-tilled and re-sodded. Like $5500 expensive. We figure we’ll just wait a while. We’ll just rake and overseed until things look nice and green and call it
I bought a rose to replace the one that broke this winter.
I also spent some time getting my veggie garden going. Â I pulled out all the bricks, raked back the mulch, added back bricks around the perimeter, and added this super cute path through the middle.
I also made this great strawberry jar cage.
I used left over porch posts from the back deck. I pre-drilled and screwed together the the pieces and then used a pneumatic stapler to attach the chicken wire. It turned out pretty cute and squirrel-proof!
I was a nice, relaxing weekend. Now, we just wait for drywall to be done and get to painting!
Sarah
Oh Spring – A Spring list post
Everyone seems to be doing spring posts this week. Making it Lovely has a list up and Young House Love just did some porch work. I want to do a spring post! I love spring. I really can’t wait for it to warm up for sure. We’ve had warm days but I want warm all day everyday.
The remainder of April and most of May will be devoted to getting the bathroom in ship-shape.
Right now it looks like this:
We’ve got a ways to go..
I’m still planning on a bit of yard work during these first fleeting days of spring. I need to plant my gladiolas. I’m planning on setting up my veggie patch. My plan for the patch has changed. I’m planning on a bed about 5′ by 10′ with a narrow pathway down the middle the long ways. It’ll be tight but I’m hoping it will give me an idea of what I should do more long-term.
Then of course, the front yard is going to be dug up and re-landscaped.
We’ve also got all the other things on the list that need to be taken care of.
1. Finish Painting the front porch
2. Remove gross chain link fence
3. Talk to neighbors about removing a couple of huge Norway Maples
You can see them in the backyard picture above, behind the ugly chainlink fence
4. Rake, re-seed, and figure out what to do about our Lumpy Lawn
5. Build a cage for my strawberries
6. Plant Arborvitae hedge
7. Build trellis privacy screens (wait until next summer)
8. Prune Cherry Tree
9. Mulch the back beds
10. Replace the rose that was killed by the snow. Anyone know what kind this is?
11. build a leaf mold compost pile to the right of the shed
12. Add trellis to the shed and plant something that will grow up and over the shed.
Big list. Not sure how much of this will get done, but I’m excited just to get to be outside. It’s been a long, cold winter.
Sarah
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Garden Update
This last weekend I did take some time to do some planting.
I got in the order from Burgess that I talked about in this post.  It was GORGEOUS out this weekend.  60 degrees and sunny and clear.  It was great to spend some time outside digging in the dirt.
I ordered: Hostas, lavender, lilacs, peegee hydrangeas, vinca minor, creeping phlox, cinnamon ferns, Arborvitae and strawberries.
The plan is to grow a nice big peegee hydrangea in the front bed surrounded by foxglove and other part-shade perennials and filled in with the vinca minor. I’m thinking of edging the sidewalk with hosta that will hang over the edge and soften the ugly sidewalk, I am also thinking about redoing the sidewalks, I need to decide what material I will be using, my dream would be to do them with pavement, for those of you in the same situation in this page I recommend to Click here for experienced commercial paving Rochester, NY.
I’ve got a bunch of iris along the fence along with some ferns farther back. Â I’m also going to sneak in some morning glory to see if we can cover that ugly fence (do I need to find good fencing company?) but the neighbors are a little anti-vines so we’ll see if they last long. Â I may put white picket in front of the fence one day to cover it up.
I planted a bunch of hosta in the side yard. Â I also put some lily of the valley in around the Weigela I planted last fall from the Arbor Day foundation. Â Once everything sprouts, I’m planning on mulching this bed to get rid of all the grass.
I also started the great neighbor-blocking wall of 2013. Â Three little arborvitae. Â We’re planning on building some lattice style fencing panels between them. Â I’m planning on 3 lattice panels so I need another arborvitae on the far right. Â Then I think we’ll tightly space arborvitae up to the AC units and up to the Spirea bush.
You can see the arborvitae are small and a little brown-tipped.  The ship from Illinois so I think they’re just winter-burned.  I hope they come back!  I got all three for $4.99 from burgess.  I can get larger stock (1′-2′ for 3/$6.99)  They are $6.99 each from Home Depot but they look better and are easily 2′ tall.  For $70 I can get 10 good looking trees.  Or for $26.50 I can get 12 unknown looking trees.  I’m leaning towards HD but I’d love your opinions.
I ended up with 2 peegee hydrangeas so one is in a pot for now. Â I’m not sure what we’ll do with it. Â I’m hoping that maybe it’ll do well in a pot on the deck. There are plenty of other places it can go as well.
The creeping phlox is currently hanging out in pots on the deck. Â I’d like to put it in the area on the right side of the yard but we’ve got lots of trash and scrap metal there right now!
I also got a Bargain Bag of strawberries.  25 strawberry plants of an unknown variety.  I ended up getting Festival strawberries which is great. They are June-bearing and supposed to be vigorous producers.  I have them set up in my pot.  I’m planning a squirrel-proof cage for the strawberry pot.  I’ll be sure to share when I figure out the details.
It’s been a long winter but the bulbs are finally starting to show themselves.
I can’t wait for spring to be in full bloom!
Any landscaping plans for this summer? Â Want to come help me with mine?
Sarah
Lumpy Lawn: What are our options?
Sigh, here I am wondering what to do about the lawn and there is currently 8 inches of snow on it. I thought we were done but Tuesday sent a new load of snow. Â This had better be the last one! Â I’m ready for spring! Â But back to the lawn…
I’m not quite sure why our lawn is so lumpy. There are some tire ruts from when we poured the shed foundation but there are ankle traps all over the yard. I’ve been doing some research and there are a few things that can cause this kind of lumpiness: Moles, Voles, and Night Crawlers.
This Article has a great description of the various rodents that can damage a lawn.
I don’t think we have any of these problems. Voles and Moles are the only ones that can burrow in the grass and make the ground lumpy. I don’t doubt we have some Voles but I think our problem has more to do with the years and years of neglect than any single pest. There were a couple holes that could be mole or vole holes and I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for any signs of these nasty little creatures.
The descriptions of night-crawler infestations have mentioned hundreds of night-crawlers coming out when it rains. They can cause some small deflections in the surface of the lawn but nothing more than an inch and for the most part the grass is so happy to have that much worm castings that it will grow in thick and offset the lumpiness. We have lots of worms but certainly not a “moving lawn” at dusk after a rain. Sounds terrifying and I’m glad we don’t have that many worms!
After researching about various causes, I think we’ve just got a case of an abandoned lawn that has gone a bit wonky. Between letting the grass grow knee-high over and over and the snow-heave, the lumpyness is to be expected.
The strips of dead grass are where the deck wood was stored. I re-seeded those areas and they started looking much better last fall. You can see the lawn is relatively level but there are hidden dips all over!
I did a bunch of research into what can be done and I came up with a couple options.
Option 1:
Top-dress and fill in low spots with top soil and sand every spring and fall for 2 years
Option 2:
Aerate and Power rake
Option 2b:
Aerate and power rake and top-dress
Option 3:
Roller and aerate
Option 4:
Cut up sod in strips using power sod cutter, level and amend soil underneath, re-lay sod
Option 5:
pull out/kill sod, roto-til and re-sod
Neither Stefan or I are perfect-lawn people. We’re not the type to baby our yard and fret about every weed. What we would like is a safe and walk able lawn to host people on and enjoy on the weekends. It doesn’t need to be dead flat but it would nice if no-one ever twisted their ankle which I have done a couple times.
My first instinct was to wait a while and then take on the project of roto-tilling it and laying new sod. It would be a big project and possibly pricey. I don’t know what sod goes for around here. I figure 2 days of a roto-tiller rental and about 50×50 square feet of sod at $.50 sq-foot comes out to $1250 plus another $200-$300 for the roto-tiller. Pricey project.
Here’s what I’m thinking. After the first lawn mowing, we’ll see about hiring someone to power-rake and aerate. Thatch is usually tan dead-grass colored and is the under-coat of the grass. It keeps the moisture in and is generally a good thing but it does make it difficult to over-seed the lawn and too much thatch can choke out the grass. We can then get some sand and top-soil and rake that over the lawn, filling in the low spots. We’ll probably have to do that several times this year as the soil settles. We can try to tamp some of the bigger areas and then over-seed the whole lawn to encourage healthy growth.
If that doesn’t do the trick, we can spring for a more invasive and expensive solution.
What do you think? Do you have any experience in reviving a neglected lawn?
Sarah
