Gentle Reader,
Been getting the yard ready for winter and setting the stage for Spring planting. Though it’s nearly December here in Colorado, we’ve had only one light snow and some beautiful weather in late November*. This means the yard has been brown for a while, which is bleah, but also has given me time to do some bedding in prep for Spring.
The big section of the back yard is all dug up and waiting for African Dogtooth Grass in the late Spring, AKA Cynodon Hybrida AKA Dog Tuff:
In the meantime, I took advantage of a late Fall sale at Ace to pick up some rolls of Erosion King Straw Blankets at half price…
…which I shall use to keep my Dog Tuff grass plugs from being completely trampled by dogs while they take root (see previous posts on this process here and here). I put the blankets down now and am hoping they don’t completely disintegrate by Spring. I shall include the product spec copy here because it’s amazing:
The erosion control blanket shall be made of a uniform layer of straw. The straw shall be free of weeds and weed seed. The straw and net covering shall be securely stitched together to create a uniform mat.
The blankets shall weigh (dry) 270g/sm plus or minus 10 percent. The weight of each roll and name of manufacturer shall be written or stenciled on the roll wrapper or an attached tag. Blankets shall be shipped in the form of a tightly compressed roll.
The blanket shall be covered on the top side with a polypropylene netting having approximate 0.5 x 0.5 mesh with photodegradable accelerators to provide breakdown of the netting within the first growing season after placement. The blanket shall be sewn together with degradable thread.
Here are pictures of that process, with my faithful yard assistant Clio:
And I’ve also taken advantage of this peculiarly warm weather to increase the Mulch Factor around young trees and Xeri areas:
Boy, thatsalotta brown. Brown, brown, brown.
But come Spring, we are going to rock this yard again, hard.
##
*See: Climate Change. Good for some selfish reasons, really really terrible for lots of other reasons.**
**See: The End of the Planet.***
***See: Denial is great until you’re no longer around to be in denial.****
****See: Just keep doing Good Work.
This Might Be A Thing 