Brown, Brown, Brown

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.

Grass Mess Confess

I confess, my grass is a mess. Not for lack of trying. This summer in general, things aren’t growing according to plan. See here and here for more on the metaphysical side of things – this post, however, is about the actual grass. Which is really more a collection of weeds with grass interspersed.

The problems: (1) dogs pee on grass, killing it and creating dead zones where the Ph of the soil itself is hostile to anything but hardy weeds; (2) bad soil build up from point (1) and also the soil is just not good in the grassy sections – a mix of hard and sandy; (3) invasive plants from other areas of the yard move in before new grass can take hold.

I’m not ashamed (well maybe a little), so here are some pictures of the problems:

Getting down in there after a couple days of intense hands-and-knees weeding, I took stock of the main offenders:

I’ve done the research and contemplated the situation, standing over my lawn like a golem, wondering where I’ve gone wrong. But it’s not me, it’s that the situation has folded in on itself over the years, compounding into a layers of problems stacked on top of each other. It’s no longer a “lawn,” it’s a collection of weeds, prairie grasses, Rye, Fescue and Bluegrasses, with swiss-cheese holes of dog pee burn accents.

I keep digging up patches of earth trying to “reset” them. This year I dug up a 10 x 20 foot patch, turning it over, adding soil amendment, burning out weed roots, letting that settle in. Then I go in and re-seed the area and do all the stuff you’re supposed to do: (1) water only in the mornings, (2) water about 1″ per week (don’t over-water), (3) don’t cut any of it until it gets about 4″ tall, then only cut it back to 3″ once a week, (4) no chemicals, (5) keep the mower blade sharp, (6) let the grass clippings act as a natural mulch, (6) whenever a dog pees on any of it, pour a batch of diluter sugar-water on that area to neutralize it.

No dice. The grass doesn’t grow in fast enough to compete with the weeds.

So next season I’m thinking about a nuclear option – Pet Zen Garden Artificial Turf.

(1) It will keep my friend Chuck happy, because he has this thing about the way we waste zillions of gallons of water on our stupid American lawn fetish (he’s probably right about that) and (2) It will look amazing (if I install it correctly) and last about 10 years if I take care of it. No water. No weeds. (3) I can spend more time in the actual garden taking care of actual gardening.

This has been a grass mess confess.

##

 

Catching Up #5: Exposing the Roots

The picture provided by Magical Realist / Impressionist Garden Lady clearly showed a dividing strip of mulch between two of those black plastic divider strips, four nice little round bushy ground cover things in the next divided space, then a crop of baby lettuces and tomato cages surrounded by marigolds and maybe a catmint plant or two. The garden is nicely mulched and weed-free. But all that was a dream that happened at least four years ago, before By Owner made his pledge to ignore all of these efforts, and before the Spring when we took ownership.

In the intervening years, three neatly divided spaces merged into one through the industrious growth of a hardy grasses (I’m looking at you, Bermuda) that formed both a waist-high sea of tangles above ground as well as a densely-packed network of underground roots that formed a single massive organism covering several hundred square feet. At one point in early summer we watched as our dog Finnegan, a hale 60-pound adventurer, walked into the grasses to pee and became so suddenly and helplessly tangled that he toppled over and had to be rescued. It was like the tentacles of a sea creature had reached up and wrapped themselves around his legs.

Not on my watch. The well-intentioned experiment of letting the yard just do its thing for a season was over. Malicious grasses had begun attacking innocent travelers and needed to be brought back a peg or two. For the next few weekends, me and the shovel got down to it. Starting in the strip between the “Xeri” area and the “garden” area, we turned the Earth over, shoving the blade deep, making satisfying incisions through dense inches of a healthy root system. Less than one square foot at a time I dug in, bent down and choked my grip on the shovel, lifted a few pounds of roots and soil, and flipped the parcel 180 degrees to expose roots to the sun. When a few square feet were turned, I’d go back, turn the blade, and lance the root balls into smaller chunks.

One weekend trashed my back and one old broken shovel on an area the size of a hallway, about 4 feet by 25 feet. The next weekend I started on the “garden” plot and turned a similar sized area. But there, the grasses were so dense that I had to first pull and tear grasses by hand before I could get the shovel through to the surface, then each turned chunk was more grass and root than earth. So I let those chunks lie in the sun for a day. Sunday, I returned to the scene of the melee with a bright blue yard bin, grabbed and shook each chunk to let good soil fall free, then deposited the offending grasses and roots. I kicked the chunks across the yard. I threw them high in the air and let them crash and explode. I picked them up and Hulk-smashed them into each other. They resisted like rooty, stubborn bastards. There were many more weekends before the tide of this battle would be turned in my favor, but a system had been rendered.

The next day at work I was in the IT guy’s office sharing some talk, gesturing with my hands. He says “Oh man what happened there?” and I’m confused. “What?” I says. He says “Your hand. What happened to your hand?” I hold it up to see and the connections where my fingers meet the palm were full of open, swollen wounds. “Oh,” I says, “Huh. Haha. I was doing a lot of yard work this weekend. Wow.” “Yeah I guess,” he says, chuckling. That was when I had first started that job, and since then, the IT guy and I have found common interest in gardening war stories, folklore, wives tales, and a fair bit of practical wisdom. We don’t talk about the blood, the battles lost, the comrades who fell. We turn our thoughts to new growth, tips on technique, shoring up the lines, and sales at Home Depot. You don’t talk about the wounds or the glories with the ones who know. But knowing there are others like you helps to return to the fields and resume in earnest.