So that is how it looks today after Jim and I spent most of the day working. You can see the layer of cardboard we have laid down over the old lawn. The flexible blue at the edge is a whole bunch of feed sacks that I procured from my friend who owns a dairy.
We have found that this is a rather superior way to make a new bed. Excluding the light from the grass under the cardboard effectively kills the grass and weeds there. We will be hauling mulch from the City’s mulch piles tomorrow, because much of the area around the drift wood is ready for the thick mulch layer that will “finish” this bed. I wish I could claim to have invented this method of gardening, but I didn’t. I just know it works and I don’t have to spread a lot of poisons around to kill the grass in the area of the bed we are forming.
Next spring when it is time to plant these areas with the young plants I am in the process of ordering, the soil under the cardboard will be loose from all the activity the earthworms will engage in.
We are laying rock into the trench we finished digging yesterday. On the front side of the new area I am laying in a retaining wall. There will be one large step up into the higher part, which will slant towards the west. Right along the edge of the bed on the west side the rock will rise straight up from the path that wanders along there. The area where we are working right now is where all the grasses will go. Hopefully, this will act as a visual barrier to the bed that nestles inside this horse shoe shaped bed.
We piled rock under the driftwood piece to give the toads a nice home.
I am in the Mid-January doldrums in the massage business. A large number of my clients are on a corporate retreat during the next couple of weeks. It is fortunate that this break in the quantity of massage I need to do coincides with such nice weather. By the time my clients are back and the cold winter weather has re-established itself, this area will be ready to rest and await planting.
It is a good thing we are getting this segment of the garden whipped into shape, because the pawpaw trees that Alex bought for us will be here in just a few months. I’d like to be ready for them.
Meanwhile, I am dreaming through the plant catalogs and getting ready to spend the money people gave me at Christmas time.
Aren’t earthworms wonderful little beings? 🙂
Looks good, you guys must have worked really hard. I expect you both need massages after all that!
As the sort of gardener who does just enough to keep his garden from being a disgrace and keep from showing the family up, I really enjoy these updates.
I suppose I use them as a way of gardening vicariously – I don’t have that much space, and if I did, I don’t have the motivation or the aptitude.
It really is lovely though!
That looks like a HUGE project. How long does it take the feed sacks to break down?
I am also gardening vicariously. Although I really should repot a plant or two. My To Do list is getting longer and longer.
Part of the reason I am doing these posts is that I am aware that there are people who gardening vicariously through my blog. I am happy to serve this purpose.
It takes a surprisingly short time for the feed sacks to break down. They are a glorious construction of four layers of very strong brown paper, and they seem to break down just after they have been there long enough to kill the grass and weeds covered by them by excluding the light. Interestingly enough, the feed purveyors are aware of the uses these get put to, plus they also know that farmers actually want to recycle them, so they are completely made of paper, even the label that tells what the feed ingredients are, the tape that covers the end, and the string that sews the sacks shut is light cotton. All of this breaks down in the garden splendidly.
Good gracious, some part of agribusiness makes sense — all-paper feed sacks!