This journal is to give you an idea of what we have been doing in our garden.
Some of the projects we have planned and some we have finished.
We run into all kinds of problems and really enjoy solving them, maybe reading
this will help next time you decide to do something in your garden.
Our motto just lately has been "mower friendly", meaning make the whole garden
easy to mow with the tractor, leaving very little to trim with the edger and push
mower. To achieve this we are combining trees and shrubs that stand alone into one bed.
For example, we have a Bottle Brush Buckeye, a Tamarix, a Sweet Gum Tree and a Silver Birch
that are all within a thirty foot radius of each other but in their own small bed. This means
we have to mow around each one, which can be a pain with a 42" tractor deck. The solution we
came up with was to combine them all into one large bed.
We started by outlining the area and shape we wanted, you can use string or a garden hose or
whatever is handy at the time. The hardest part came next, to remove the lawn grass I used a
flat shovel and skimmed all the sod at about a two inch depth. This is a twofold solution,
first it removes all the grass roots and secondly gives you some fill for any holes you might
have in your yard. After the backbreaking chore of skimming comes the easy part, rototilling.
I rototilled the bed breaking it up into a light and airy consistency taking care not to get
too close to the trees. This is where my wife took over.
She planted a variety of flowers ensuring an extended growing season. Hostas, Day Lilies,
Lambs Ears, Sedum (Autumn Joy), Daffodils, and Crocus. We have some more Lilies on the way
which we will plant next spring. All these plants were already established in our greenhouse
so in effect we had an instant garden in just one day. The effect can be dramatic and the
mowing a whole lot easier.
We have many projects planned so keep coming back to see how we are doing.
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