Sunday stuff done
May. 5th, 2008 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnridleyI got a bit of stuff accomplished Sunday after a little picking up inside (not nearly enough; the outside stuff getting done is at the expense of the inside going downhill).
The strip of weeds in front of the flower beds in front of the house got tilled up and seeded with grass. The dahlia bulbs got planted in the west bed after pulling the weeds. I don't know how they'll do; some were sprouting, but some were rotted. I'm sure we'll have some. I'll look up when they SHOULD be planted and set an alarm for next year.
I tilled the borders around the two front beds as best I could; they were badly grown in with grass and I took about a dozen passes around the beds, first clockwise then anti-. I used all the wood chips and weed stop that I had around the pond Saturday so mulching that will have to wait until I can get home in time to get to the recycle center for another load of chips.
The 5 new rose plants got planted in an arc behind the pond, I set them in with some dark topsoil (from the recycle center) spiked with "rose food" fertilizer. I intended to set the climbing fence for the peas in the garden, since planting time is coming up in a week or so, but didn't get that done. I do have two 10' treated 2x4s that I didn't use on the trailer project (the existing boards were fine) so I'll probably cut those in half and use them.
I remembered that I had a package of tree spikes (fertilizer) formulated for evergreens, which I bought about 10 years ago and never used, because the junipers were going nuts even without fertilizer. I opened the package, and they were crumbling, so I just dug little holes around all our evergreens and crumbled in bits of the spikes.
While walking back from church through the neighborhood in the morning, I noticed that one of the neighbors has a russian olive bush that's trimmed in a nice way and it looks pretty good, sort of an understory look. We have tons of russian olive in our easement area. It's completely untended, and it's really pretty ugly looking. I'd never even considered that the stuff might actually be tendable, but I thought, I have a new chain saw inherited from my FIL so let's see how it does. It does really well; it's a Stihl 026, which from what I gather online was a light professional saw when he bought it, very well thought of and not a cheap saw. In any case it started right up and ran perfectly, cutting like a knife through butter. The two bushes that I worked on look much better now. I took about 2/3 of their mass out, so the brush pile grew quite a lot. I think we may actually have to burn it later this year.
Also a lot of random pulling weeds back from plantings, the rhododendron lost a bunch of soil around its base again (and isn't doing well) so I packed some more topsoil in there and fed and watered it. The grass I sprayed to make the east garden is finally dying, so that should be able to be started soon.
The strip of weeds in front of the flower beds in front of the house got tilled up and seeded with grass. The dahlia bulbs got planted in the west bed after pulling the weeds. I don't know how they'll do; some were sprouting, but some were rotted. I'm sure we'll have some. I'll look up when they SHOULD be planted and set an alarm for next year.
I tilled the borders around the two front beds as best I could; they were badly grown in with grass and I took about a dozen passes around the beds, first clockwise then anti-. I used all the wood chips and weed stop that I had around the pond Saturday so mulching that will have to wait until I can get home in time to get to the recycle center for another load of chips.
The 5 new rose plants got planted in an arc behind the pond, I set them in with some dark topsoil (from the recycle center) spiked with "rose food" fertilizer. I intended to set the climbing fence for the peas in the garden, since planting time is coming up in a week or so, but didn't get that done. I do have two 10' treated 2x4s that I didn't use on the trailer project (the existing boards were fine) so I'll probably cut those in half and use them.
I remembered that I had a package of tree spikes (fertilizer) formulated for evergreens, which I bought about 10 years ago and never used, because the junipers were going nuts even without fertilizer. I opened the package, and they were crumbling, so I just dug little holes around all our evergreens and crumbled in bits of the spikes.
While walking back from church through the neighborhood in the morning, I noticed that one of the neighbors has a russian olive bush that's trimmed in a nice way and it looks pretty good, sort of an understory look. We have tons of russian olive in our easement area. It's completely untended, and it's really pretty ugly looking. I'd never even considered that the stuff might actually be tendable, but I thought, I have a new chain saw inherited from my FIL so let's see how it does. It does really well; it's a Stihl 026, which from what I gather online was a light professional saw when he bought it, very well thought of and not a cheap saw. In any case it started right up and ran perfectly, cutting like a knife through butter. The two bushes that I worked on look much better now. I took about 2/3 of their mass out, so the brush pile grew quite a lot. I think we may actually have to burn it later this year.
Also a lot of random pulling weeds back from plantings, the rhododendron lost a bunch of soil around its base again (and isn't doing well) so I packed some more topsoil in there and fed and watered it. The grass I sprayed to make the east garden is finally dying, so that should be able to be started soon.
