Full of Promise

Early Girl tomatoes

Right now, the vegetable garden is still looking good. My tomato plants in the ground and in pots are all thriving - no sign of disease, leaves not munched by anything, many blooms and a few fruit forming. One of my tomato plants in the ground, an Early Girl variety, is taller than me. Peppers in my greenstalk towers have recovered from their original slug leaf holes, and just now starting to flower. The corn is about waist high, and I planted beans between the stalks and they are up about six inches; they are not yet climbing up the corn as they are supposed to. The zucchini in its veiled bed has sprung up into giant plants. They are not yet blooming at all, but the plants are big and healthy. My potatoes in bags are full to the top with dirt and just now starting to bloom. The book says that's the time they start making little potatoes down below. I'm very excited about the potatoes!

My zucchini under its anti-bug veil

I've been tending the plants much more this year than in past years. I've used bug spray and slug pellets. I water nearly every day if it doesn't rain. I amended the soil heavily before planting, and I've fertilized all of the fruiting vegetables a couple of times now. I have a rough schedule - the next round of fertilization will be around the end of the month. 

My greenstalk with peppers, herbs
and cherry tomatoes

But it's still mostly promise at this point, nothing to actually eat! Except, in the greenstalks, I planted herbs and one swiss chard (chard was my only successful outdoor vegetable last year). I had to cut back some of the basils and parsleys and dills and the big leaves of the chard. I washed and cleaned them up, and will sautee the chard with some of the herbs - I think I might make an omelet with a bunch of the rest of the herbs and have that for dinner with the chard.

Salads!

My herbs (some of them)

I am getting a ridiculous amount of pleasure playing with my indoor plants, especially the hydroponic salad garden. I started up in early December, and I've got lettuce enough to keep me in a daily salad. In about a month, I'm going to have a deluge of cherry tomatoes (god willing and the creek don't rise). I don't know that a million cherry tomatoes is ever needed, but I can always cook them down into a quick sauce, since I also am drowning in basil (with sides of oregano, thyme and dill). 

They do require tending, however, it's not just set and forget. The plants in the countertop units need water and liquid nutrients, and the lights on the front of the units helpfully signal when to take care of that. The lights and the water pumps are on automatic timers, and once you've told it when to turn on in the morning (I have them come on at about sunrise) then they are set. But the roots get tangled in the filter and pumps, and regular harvesting is necessary once they get to a certain size.

Seven tomato plants, blooming under my own lights.
That's an old car windshield-screen, reflecting back

The jars need refilling with nutrient-rich mixture, every few days. It's kind of a production, getting my used jugs (picked from the neighbors' recycling boxes) and measuring and mixing the solution, checking each jar, and taking off the lids and topping them off properly. And I had to set the place up, with adjustable shelves to keep the jars the right distance from the lights, and putting my own grow lights on a (simple mechanical) timer.

The big basement unit is smarter than the countertop units and talks to an app on my phone to remind me to top off the water and nutrients. But it also requires maintenance, and I've run into a couple of problems with roots jamming the sensors. 

Blooms and babies!

But spending time tending my salad gardens makes me happy!

Today's lunch
No slugs or bugs!

 

Mostly lettuce in one half of the basement farm
Different colors and shapes and tastes

‘‘Twas The Day Before Christmas

 And we woke up to temperatures just barely above zero. We knew the storm was coming, and I got all the outdoor lights taken care of a couple of weeks ago. So last minute prep included making sure I had plenty of dry firewood (in case the power goes off-so far so good!) and doing a last plant check. My chard had survived so far, but I didn’t expect it would make it through this prolonged bout of extreme cold, so I harvested what there was. A nice supplement to tonight’s meat-heavy dinner- just a quick sauté and a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar, I think. But it’s never as beautiful cooked as when it’s fresh from the garden!

I did a fairly minimal light show this year. The red lights along the roof have been up for about five or more years. I added the white lights at the entrance for practicality, and the colored lights along the bushes in front also illuminate the side path.

Moved Indoors

In September, we hit the first string of nights below 60 degrees, then below 50 degrees. That was the signal to start bringing in the house plants.  Starting September 25, I've been moving many of them indoors. They are generally bigger than they were went they went out, and I've divided some into multiple pots and I am trying to propagate more. So far, I've managed to buy only one new one this season! But still, there is just a lot to contend with.

 I acquired some shelves on which to put my plants over the winter last year as the collection grew. Some of that furniture went outside with the plants, so I had to first clean all the furniture and get it back inside before the plants could come in. Then the plants themselves, and their pots, had to be wiped cleaned, and then thoroughly sprayed with horticultural soap before bringing them in. So it was a bit of a multi-day production.

All my plants were in my "new" sunroom last year, but I expanded some into my morning room (as I call my office for its eastern exposure). I follow "urban jungle blog" on the 'gram, and that has made me up my game for how to position the plants. I decided spreading them out both looks cleaner and simpler, and it also brings the lushness to more of the house. Puttering among them all is a pleasure for me.

Some plants are still outside, but nights now are down in the thirties. No frost yet, but it's coming. The ones outside can take more cold, and I may try to overwinter a couple of the hardy ones in my plastic grow-shed, maybe with more protection. The grow shed only saves a couple of degrees over outside unless the sun is shining, but if it gets really really cold I could put a ceramic space heater (which I own) out there via extension cord. The other trick with the grow shed is to remember they don't get any precipitation there, and so they need some watering during the winter. I'll almost certainly put the (hardy) banana there, with an eye to planting it in the ground and starting a banana grove next year. I don't have a non-freezing sheltered place, but my above-ground spare bedroom normally has the heat vent closed (when no-one is staying there which is almost always) and it gets down around 60, I think. So I may try to put some of the plants that want some dormancy, but not actual freezing, in there.

Many of the plants I brought inside quickly lost a few leaves. I don't really trim and prune them during their summer vacation, so there was some catching up to do. I don't think the loss of leaves was indicative of bigger problems, as they seem to have settled into their new places without continuing to go bald.

Garden Record-Keeping

I blog here partly as a means of keeping track of what is going on in my garden. There is a long and honored tradition of garden journal-keeping. In fact, garden records from centuries past are being mined for understanding how weather and climate has changed over time. On a modestly selfish note, I find myself sometimes reviewing these blog posts to see when I did what in the garden, and how it has changed over time. Photos are so important to see what was going on.

Tulips planted in 2018 are starting to fade.
Time to order new bulbs for fall planting.

I just looked back over the April and May entries I made from 2019 to last year. That (2019) was the first year after I lost the Big Spruce and got the fence up, totally changing how my garden functions, and of course June 2019 was when I retired for good and all, giving me a lot more time to work on the garden. I made some ambitious plans then, and I've carried out some of them! But looking at what I did and wrote in past years during the busy spring season has made me sad that I haven't blogged so much here. Even worse, I haven't even always taken pictures of what is going on! I've been busy in the garden (and inside, with seed starting and indoor plants), and I have taken very brief notes of what I've done, but not enough observations or photos of what has been happening. So here, I'm going to do some catch-up blogging. (Note: between writing the first draft of this and now, I've been out there and taken maybe a hundred new photos, so I'd be able to illustrate this and subsequent posts.) It's a grey day, still very wet from last night's downpour, and I had an especially good and vigorous workout earlier this morning, so I'm good with flopping on the couch with the computer actually in my lap. It seems so self-indulgent, with the world going to hell around me, but I'm keeping up with my tiny little piece of it.

Species tulips in the side yard last longer.

Because I started things from seed inside, and bought more things to set out later, I've been impatient with the weather we've been having. We've had some very nice days - rated 10 out of 10 by the Capital Weather Gang - but we continue to experience serious periods of cold weather. It's also often been grey, but rain has been below average (last night with over an inch helped!)  We had temperatures overnight in the 30s last week, and we'll see low 40s this weekend. We skirted the edge of a frost just two weeks ago. I planted peas in the ground in my back veggie bed in early March, and they came up slowly and have only poked along since. (They may have gotten nibbled by rabbits, because I didn't deploy the protective netting until much later.) Peas are traditionally the first crops to be planted, but it's been several years since I tried them. 

The traditional demarcations of spring planting seasons are: (1) As soon as the ground can be worked in the spring; (2) After substantial risk of frost is past; (3) After all danger of frost is past; (4) When night-time temperatures are in the 50s; and (5) When the soil has warmed up. I sat down and figured out when those dates have been lately, and then backed up from those dates to start seeds indoors under lights. But each of those dates has been later than in past years. To be fair, we've actually tracked fairly closely to the "traditional" date for the last frost - but the last several years have been warmer and I bet on it as I bought plants and started seeds. We still haven't gotten to nights in the 50s and warm soil yet, but I think the next two weeks will get us there. 

The ugly but effective grow house,
with Bixby for scale and decoration

My back patio, with two sides brick walls of the house, faces east and south and is very sheltered. I started bringing plants outside to the patio the second week of April, at first bringing them in at night, then finally leaving them there. The bricks absorb heat during the day and provide some warmth at night. I have shelves there, and plants on the lower shelves have a roof over their heads which also helps trap the heat at night. I have a "grow house", a white plastic-covered green house. I've been using it as a shed to store crap for years, but after a major de-cluttering last year, this year I've put some of my plants out there. It warms up substantially during the days, (at least five degrees on a shady day, and up to plus-twenty degrees in the sun!) and it cools to nearly ambient at night. I have a couple of big five-gallon buckets of water in the grow house, and the water heats up during the day and releases heat back into the air as it cools at night, which maybe can keep the air slightly warmer than outside.

This corner has deer protection from the fence
and a surprising amount of sun. I want to move the grill
and get rid of the bush to be able to put potted plants in the sun.

I've been observing the past couple of years, the sun and shade patterns around the house and yard. They are substantially different than they were when I moved in. For years, I've been in denial of the increasing shade from all the trees I planted. I'm finally accepting it, and that has led to some plans to reshape parts of the yard. Leaves have only emerged in the past two weeks (again, I've been impatient) and now I'm getting a better idea of exactly what to do this year. I'm amazed at how different my sun room is, now the leaves are out. My sunny room is now filled with a green, shady, cool, ambience. I intend to deploy a lot more pots outside, and tailor their placement around the yard to the light conditions the plants need.

The back entrance to my house (on the right).
There is a gravel driveway under the grass, to be renewed.
The new stone walkway will run from the end of the driveway
at the house to the gate.

I am contracting for one big landscaping job. The back entrance to my house is the flattest way in. There is a driveway with an initial steep slope about four feet up from the street, but then a gradual slope, and then it's mostly level from the driveway to the kitchen door along the back of my house. And the kitchen door threshold is only two steps up from the ground. (The front entrance has several steps from the street and then more steps on to the front porch.) If ever I have mobility issues, this back entrance may become my main entrance. So I've hired a local landscaping firm to renew my old gravel driveway, and then build a wide (at least 42", wheelchair ready) stone walkway from the driveway to the kitchen door. And to do it without sending the water that currently pools there into my basement. (No point in building a ramp up to the door, I don't actually need it yet and maybe never will.) I'm at the company's mercy on scheduling, but I'm looking forward to having it done at last. Once they are done, there may be more changes I make to the yard around the back. I'm delaying some projects that won't be directly affected until I can assess how things look and feel with the new walkway.

Spa Day

The weather climbed up into the seventies this week, and I decided it was time to give all my houseplants a bath. I’ve had a minor spider mite infestation, and wanted to tackle it before it became major. Many houseplant books recommend washing plants regularly to remove dust and pests. I’ve seen instagrams of folks taking a shower with their plants (check out urban jungle blog). My shower was broken and too small anyway, so the window of warmth allowed me to proceed. 

First they all went outside, then they all got hosed down. After a brief drying period, they all got sprayed with neem oil and went back inside.

Bixby has a thing for spraying water. He goes nuts chasing the stream and has to jump and bite it. So he participated in the plant wash, and proceeded to roll in the dirt to dry off, and so he got a dog wash in the kitchen sink. I bought the only bottle of dog shampoo at CVS, and the advanced oatmeal formula has made him fluffy and nicely fresh smelling.

I completed my spa day by fixing my broken shower and cleaning myself off. My old shower knobs used to leak, were fixed by a plumber and replaced with ugly plastic knobs, which only lasted a couple of years. Another trip by the plumber gave me a new set of plastic, and when they started to spin freely this year, I decided to tackle it myself. But matching old parts is hard. I ended up, after three visits, with metal inside but plastic outside “universal” knobs, that don’t match but work. This is clearly a temporary fix, but “temporary” could be a couple of months or a few years. The joy of old houses!

Four Lettuces and a Cabbage

 My indoor gardens continue to produce. I harvested enough lettuce for two small salads for myself. I grow heirloom varieties: Merveille de quatre saisons, Red sail, Rouge L’hiver, Black seeded Simpson. The cabbage is a baby tatsoi. I started several seeds in one pod, many germinated, so I harvested all but one plant so I can see if it makes a cute little mini-head. In the same spirit, I’m trying “tennis ball” lettuce, a butter head type supposed to make cute little rounds. Kale also is said to do well, and chard and arugula.

I’ve got green tomatoes! I started two types of mini-cherry types- the plants are supposed to stay small, as well as making small fruit. One red, the other orange. I transferred several of the starts to pots, and left two plants in the hydroponic machine. The hydroponic ones are blooming away! I pollinated by vibrating the clusters of flowers with an old head on my electric toothbrush (thank you, internet) and I’ve got some tiny little fruit starting to grow! This is so much more exciting even than lettuce!

Meanwhile, outside, it’s too early for anything except cleanup. But my witchhazel is blooming, as it should. Last year this time, crocuses were blooming, but not yet this year. 

Indoor Gardening

This west-facing window also has some lights

Since I always ride the trends about half a beat behind the wave, I'm now fully into indoor gardening. Some of the plants I'm raising inside will be planted outside in the summer, some will move with their pots outside and then come back in, and some will stay inside. Most of the ones to go outside were bought mail order from a specialty place. They came in four inch pots, and they will turn into giant bananas and brugmansias and blooming ginger and bouganvillea and other delights, I hope. Some are vegetables that were started in the hydroponics systems, and will be moved to pots and eventually outside.

There is a constant balancing act here - I buy plants, then need to buy furniture to put them on, and supplemental lights to help them grow. Now, with leftover pots, maybe I need some more plants? I'll be starting more seeds in the hydroponic gardens - those work really well - but then they will need to move to pots.

The cozy corner

My updated sun room lends itself to plants. I've decided I like concentrating them in that bright room, and I've also festooned the room with supplemental lights to make the growing days longer and bright every single day (even when blizzarding like right now). I spend the middle of the day out there, and in the evenings if I'm going to watch TV. It definitely has calming impacts on me to see the greenery everywhere. And, I'm enough into the mindset of the grower than I don't really see the plant itself when I look at it; I see what it could come to be when it gets bigger, puts out more branches, starts blooming.

The south window; palms and basil and cyclamen

 

The development section in the east window
Sad looking lemon and lime trees, a very bad Christmas cactus,
a cherry tomato in a hydroponic milk jug and some paperwhite bulb starts

 

More Plants!

 

I took my girl plant shopping for her less-than-2-weeks-away birthday. I ended up with a sizeable haul myself! Everything needs to be repotted and then I need to find places for them. I'm pleased! More green! Bring that outdoors in!

Vacation is Over

My morning room

I woke up yesterday to a temperature of 48 degrees. I knew it was going to get cold, but I thought I had a few more days! Fifty degrees is my cutoff for the summer vacation for my indoor plants (and that is pushing it). I just remembered I go warmer for putting them outside in the spring, more like 55 or 60, and it seemed to take forever to get there this year. I think it was May before they went outside. But as always, they really thrive when out there in the warm weather.

With the weather forecast stay as cold or colder for the next week, yesterday was devoted to bringing in the jungle. I expanded my houseplant collection last winter, so I had to spend some time deciding where these plants would go.(I did lose a couple as well.) I didn't have stands or places for many of them. 

I decided to put most of the plants into the TV room (formerly known as the dog's room, sometimes referred to as the South Wing), rather than scatter them throughout the house. This is a small room off the main house with big windows on three sides. I had to wash several outdoor pieces of furniture, and even saw off the feet of several small wooden Ikea tables that had rotted a bit from sitting on damp earth. Several of the plants also needed repotting. So this turned into a most-of-the-day project, not a bad way to spend the day. And I think I like the idea of a garden room. I've noticed the increased light in there from lower angles and fewer leaves, and I gravitate towards it.

The South Wing

Now, I think I need more plants! There is a hip spot in downtown DC for houseplants I could visit. There is the internet. But I think I may start with Home Depot and Lowes. As I recall from this spring, Lowes had better plants, but Home Depot had wider choices for pots. 

I had been very big into palm trees when I first got the house and realized the possibilities of my TV room. Here's a moody photo taken from inside November, 2001.

November 2001

Another Rain Garden

I've had a big problem with drainage on my side yard. This isn't a problem for my basement, but after big rains the water has pooled there for some time. Last winter we had a stint of snow, warming to thaw it, followed by several days of a deep freeze, and that section of my yard turned into a skating rink. 

First iteration of rain basin, perking acceptably

Yards on my street tend to be mostly level, little plateaus created by bulldozers. But then there are steep slopes before the ground levels out to the next yard. This side of my yard is deeply shady, and slopes gradually to the fence, after which it drops down a whole story of a house. My ground is level with my next door neighbor's roof. This is great for privacy. It seemed, however, to be a bad idea to solve my drainage problem by sending it all down the slope to the foundation of the house next door - especially when I know they already have problems with water in their basement. Besides, I'm pretty sure water coursing down that steep hill will drive significant erosion in the slope, resulting eventually in my lovely fence toppling over down the hill. Deluges are becoming more frequent, and they drive much more erosion than the same amount of water spread out over a longer time.

Beginning of the trench

After some years of studying the problem, watching the movement of water through my yard, measuring slopes with a laser level, I decided to run french drains along the side to the front, where I have a small space far enough from trees, my house, and the drop-off to put in another rain garden. The natural slope of the land is from back to front so this working with gravity in my favor. I have a downspout off the roof gutters at the back side corner of my house which would feed directly into the drains. I have another downspout along the back of my house, and I would allow that to drain on the surface, where it should run down across my grass to the low ground in the yard where the porous french drains would channel it out of the area.

This was going to be a much bigger project than my front rain garden, because I would be starting from scratch. I don't think I would have had the gumption to tackle it without the boost from challenging myself in my vacations this summer.

First, I dug up and set aside the large stepping stones that made a path along the side from the back to the front. I needed the wheeled dolly to move many of the huge stones. Then, I laid out the drainage basin area in front, and dug it out with a shovel to about 18". I used most of the displaced soil to bank up the sides of the basin, especially towards the down slope. It dug fairly easily, but where I stopped the looser top soil had yielded to some hard clay. I dug down further into that hard-packed area, and mixed with the clay several bags of locally-generated compost, filling the basin partially back up. I filled the basin with water, and watched it drain - it took about an hour to perk through the clay and soil. That seemed promising.

The trench gets deeper

I trenched backwards from the basin along the house to the back yard. The first layer of the trench was done solely by hand, but there were only 2"-4" of topsoil there before I reached clay (I just put it to the side as I went). I have an electric roto-tiller, and so I got into a routine of running through the trench with the rototiller, loosening the clay. Then I would come back with a spade and remove the loosened soil for a couple of inches, tossing stones to the downside and dirt to the upside. There were some roots that required sawing by hand. (I didn't worry too much about damage to any trees, as the trench is about ten feet from the house, so the roots couldn't have traveled much further than where I cut them off.)  

This was a very big undertaking. It took me maybe five or six days of two hour stints of rototilling and digging to get the trench as deep as I was willing to go. This includes one day of rototiller repair, when I got it too close to a metal mesh fence and the blades got stuck in the fence. I had to pretty much disassemble the whole machine to disentangle it from the fence, and then put it back together again. 

During the deluge. See the drain pipe sticking out

Before I was all the way done with the trenching, we had a big rain - about 1.4" of rain in a few hours. I hooked the drain pipes together in advance of the rain, and watched how it worked. The good news is water ran nicely along the system as planned. The bad news is the rain garden basin wasn't nearly big enough, and it overflowed. The water that was collected there took over 18 hours to drain away - I figure that long time was because the ground was saturated and there was no place for it to perk to. So after it had dried out some, I resumed digging and made it bigger in circumference. I also worked on the berm and tried to slope the sides so that overflow would move in the direction of my main front garden, not over the edge.

Finally I declared the trench as deep as it was going to go. I lined it with landscape fabric, put down pond stones in the bottom of the trench, laid in the porous drain pipes, wrapped the landscape fabric around it like a blanket, and covered it over with the displaced dirt. Hooray!

Bixby digging

I set the stepping stones back on the surface. I still need to sink and seat them properly, on the to-do list. But I want to make sure everything has settled in place before I expend too much effort leveling them out. I should note that I have voles actively tunneling around and between the stepping stones. When I dug my trench I apparently cut through a major passageway, and they have been rebuilding. Bixby entertained himself going after them - it seems he can smell and hear them from the surface. So sometimes I would rake an area smooth, only to have to step and smash new vole tunnels, and rake dirt back into the holes Bixby had dug.

Stepping stones and plants in place

 

 

 

I planted white turtleheads into the rain basin, along with transplanting a single existing pink turtlehead that had popped up away from my main patch.  Along the side of the house - very deeply shady - I put in a grand total of about 30 plants - three kinds of ferns and three kinds of sedges. I planted them pretty densely and I have hopes of a green area with contrasting shades, heights and textures, that needs only minimal management. 

In the rest of the back / side yard, a flat open area, I planned to plant grass. I dug up the biggest weeds by hand. Then I rototilled the whole area to loosen the hard packed soil. Then, I distributed compost over the whole area, and rototilled it again to mix it in. Next I raked the whole area smooth, and tamped it down with my feet. Lastly, I spread bags of special "lawn soil" over the top, raking again, and finally, in advance of the first anticipated rain for several days, seeded it by hand. 

Baby grass! (I have to blow the leaves out-no raking yet)

Yay, ten days later, I've got baby grasses coming along! Last fall, when I planted grass inside the fenced yard, I felt I needed to protect it from Rocky's big feet and questing mouth. Now, I'm not too worried about little Bixby dancing across the tender shoots, but I monitor him and don't let him start digging for voles.

Whew! All told, over a month has elapsed. And as I said, it was years in the planning. We haven't had a downpour since the once that overflowed, (before I was finished) so I don't know how well it will do, but I'm fairly confident it will make a substantial difference.

Indoors

My Christmas cactus
bloomed when I brought it in
right before Thanksgiving

It's winter, and I can't go anywhere warm. I'm often swept along by trends (though I've avoided sourdough), and so I've upped my indoor garden game. 

I have a number of plants I take out and bring in each year. I had planned to try bringing in, digging up, or taking cuttings of some of the potted plants I had last summer, but never got around to it. 

Just cut back

However, I do have one big success story to report. I've had a tropical hibiscus, bought at Home Depot a number of years ago. I generally keep it inside the fence because it is apparently very tasty (according to the deer). Inside the fence means not quite enough sun. So it's been looking very sad for a few years.

This year, I put the hibiscus pot just outside the fence, snugged up against the porch, and there it got a lot more sun. It did well enough that I was emboldened to cut it way back when I brought it in. At first, it looked like a bunch of sticks with one huge anomalous blossom. But it has filled out from the lower branches, and I hope it will have a nicer shape this year. In the meantime, it brings lots of joy with many blossoms.

Hibiscus

I've also bought some new inside plants. I started by hitting a black Friday Amazon special, totally out of the blue and on impulse, which I was resolved not to do. I got 16 tiny succulents for $15 - what a deal! Now, with the additional purchase of special succulent potting soil and right-sized pots for them, I have 11 surviving succulents on my kitchen windowsill, a slightly less good deal. But I see them and cheer them on every time I use the sink, not such a bad thing.

Succulents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also ventured into modern hydroponics with Aerogarden. I gave my boys one each for Christmas last year, and had reports of good success. My sister-in-law has many (apparently adding more and more is common). So I gave one to my girl for Christmas, and got one for myself as well. Then, I added a second for myself, almost right away.

Later this week, I'm going to have a (small) side salad of lettuce and basil from my kitchen counter garden! How cool is that!

One of my "Cousin It" palms

The other one

Grass

 The most vigorous project I’ve been intermittently working on is trying to actually grow a lawn in the spaces where I mow. In my sunny side yard, I’ve got a vigorous zoysia lawn that could stand up to a soccer match. But in my back and front, I’ve mowed infrequently and done little to nothing to try to foster grass versus crabgrass and other weeds.

Lawns have a deservedly bad rap. A perfect traditional lawn requires both labor and chemical inputs. I will never do that. I take no pride in having a perfect lawn. What I want is a green cover that can take footsteps and not erode. My sunny zoysia side yard meets that criteria without a lot of work. It only gets mowed - but pretty much never more often than every two weeks (in spring) and I’ve gone six weeks or more in hot high summer or fall. Sometimes (rarely) I dig out weeds like dandelions, but it’s so dense they don’t get a lot of footholds.

But my front and back yards have been sad territories, where a succession of weeds also leads to bare, muddy spots, and I fear runoff into my neighbor’s yard and the street. This year, I’ve been hanging out in the yard a lot, with the dog, and it’s really been nagging at me. I’ve maximized the part of my yard that is not lawn, that doesn’t need mowing, but I want to have space in the back (inside the fence and private)for me and the dog to move around. As is not unusual with me, I almost accidentally started a small project that has turned into a major renovation.

It all started with wanting to get rid of the azalea outside my kitchen window. One of my legacy azaleas, it was right beside the kitchen door and was infested with english ivy and a vine known commonly and accurately as “tear thumb”. Like all Japanese azaleas, it looked terrific for a week or so in the spring, and the rest of the time just sat there. It’s only wildlife value was providing cover and perches to the birds - no insects or other food. Sitting on my patio I had contemplated pulling it out, and on a lovely, not too hot day at the end of August, when it had recently rained so the ground was soft, I started digging. It took several hours, but I got it, roots and all. I raked it smooth, opened the huge bag of grass seed I had bought and spread it by hand. I fenced it off from the dog, watered it three times a day per instructions, and about a week later tiny little grass plants had sprouted! I was so excited! Time to start the next phase.

When I started digging, I realized I had bitten off more than I could chew. The first small patch I had planted had first been dug up to get the bush out. This next section was hard work to fork up. I already knew I wanted to do most of the backyard, so I bought a rototiller. It’s electric, rated “medium duty”, and it cost only 2x what it would cost to rent for a single day. It is a little bit scary to use, but it gets the job done. So September 12 I planted section 2 (and over seeded the many bare spots of section 1) and a week later I had many cute baby grasses sprouting up. More success! Keep going!

But, as so often happens, I took a digression. I had been planning to clean out my two garden sheds, because I thought it was ridiculous to have two sheds. One is very ugly, and the other needs repair. Cleaning them out meant pulling all the crap out of both, and then thoughtfully deciding what to get rid of (crap left over from the basement reno, mostly) and what to keep, and how to store it. A fine stretch of fall weather gave me a few days without rain where stuff could be spread all over. I’m happy with the organization for tools and garden supplies I ended up with in the red wood shed, and I’m still contemplating what to do with the ugly plastic white shed. It has a very sturdy metal pipe frame, and I could use a place to sit outside out of the rain, and to store things out of the elements during winter. I’ll mull over the winter. 

So finally, I had cleared out enough of the back to start on the next logical but much larger section. It took me a couple of days to rototill, because I kept stopping to rake up the crab grass or bend over and pull it out by the roots. I’m afraid it’ll have gone to seed anyway, but I wanted to do at least a decent job, though I know it’s far from perfect.. I switched the dog-barrier to defend the new territory (because the first two patches were thick enough to walk on and even mow!) and broadcast the seeds towards the end of September. Again, in about a week, baby grasses appeared, and it is nearly at the mowing stage! Three to four weeks, but again I did some overseeding of bare spots a couple of weeks in. Now, the voles have really gone to town, tunneling through the new looser earth. I walk over their tunnels and push them down, but I don’t know how that will affect my baby grasses.

I’ve got one more backyard patch to plant, but I took some digressions. I turned over by hand a small place by the front door that was purely mud (where it had been dug up for the gas meter in June) and planted more grass seed. I also raked and pulled crabgrass and wild strawberry from an adjacent front patch, and planted grass seed in raked furrows, without turning it over completely. I’m not going to get to that spot with serious prep this year, so I’m curious to see if the overseeding will do anything. I’ve got some plants to plant elsewhere, and some structural issues to improve drainage. I haven’t completely decided whether the drainage solution will expand into my remaining back yard future lawn, so that’s a great excuse to avoid hauling out the rototiller again.

The clock is ticking on cold weather, however. There is a limited window to do this. I’d like to get it done this year. Just not right now.