A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion Landscape trials and triumphs 10 year garden plan revamped.

I'm just going to close the old one. It was so messy. It could take some time for me to get this one right. I'm not all that great with a camera or a computer.

The picture of the front of the house is in another topic so I won't reprint it here.


This is the picture of the back of the house as you can tell the property is on a very deep slope. The shed is the building behind the deck.


Here is the frontage of my property. It's about 230 feet. The part right in front of the house is where the fence is extending one section past the driveway. My hope for this area is to have a flower bed that extends from the fence down into the ditch. The reason of course is so I don't have to mow that very ackward area. So far I have 4 sedum, 1 scarlet phlox, one ditch lily clump, two lambs ear clumps and one ornamental grass clump planted. But it is still over run with grass and weeds.

You're getting better and better with that camera. Good shots.

Here is half of the ditch flower bed that I am working on. This gives you a good shot of my broken mailbox post. It is a form of entertainment for the highschool kids to run down mailboxes with their cars. I'd like to build a brick post but getting through the clay to make the footer has got me beat at this point. So for now it's bent lol.


This is the sidewalk bed that I made. I used cardboard to smother the lawn and weeds that were there rather than trying to dig it up. I paid the price of not having a hot green buy having a lot of weeds to pull up last year. This year I pulled up all the weeds and then put down preen. I've had it pretty easy in that bed as far as the weeding goes.

I was going to upload more photos but tinypic is giving me problems again. Probably more virus stuff. I just love giving money to the computer repair shop in town.

Looking good. I have never seen patio stones in that shape before. For the mailbox, I'd get some heavy re-bar steel, install it deep with a concrete tube form then cover the steel pipe with a wood form, then leave those kids run into that for a surprise Ya that's right, I'm cruel

For the life of me..I can't find the post with the pic to the front of your house.

I won't "suprise" them because it is probably their parents car.

But I'm thinking about a 24 inch raised bed using concrete pavers or brick and mortar. And then a steel post filled with concrete for the mailbox.


Here is the front of the house the way it looks now with filled in foundation and sidewalk beds. And yes the foundation bed needs to be thinned. The irises and blackberry lilies went crazy.

That is looking good, Tammy. I also have a better idea of what you are talking about now, as well. When you have spoken of the ditch before I somehow envisioned it down the side of your property. not along the front. I am wondering how your neighbors have dealt with the ditch up and down your road?

Well the trailer next to mine is falling apart. The yard is completely wild.

The couple across the street have loads of ditch lilies on their embankment and he plants roses but then lets the yard be natural. I'm not sure how the roses survive that. His embakment as way tall so I can't really see his yard.

Across and down one from me is a real country yard lol. Like my dad would have if he could. The guy has built a boiler for heating his house, and then he has a really tall ornamental windmill that is broken lying in the yard waiting to be fixed. Did I mention the 5 cars? They are a lovely couple but I think his "honey do" list is a little longer than there are hours in a day.

Everyone else has lawn.

Very nice house Tammy

Too bad we can't always pick our neighbors. Mine are a Mexican gang MS 13. I wish they'd move.

Same being said for mine...they are all sister and brother-in-laws

Here is the side foundation bed as it looks today.

When I moved in it have a few purple and white glads in it and that was all. I filled it in with irises, mums, impatiens where the shed stops the sun from shinning and Tropicannas. Now if I could just get rid of the the locus tree seedlings I'd be in good shape. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of it back then.


This was the first years compost pile.

I must have deleted the picture I had on the compost as it is now. Maybe if I remember I'll shoot a picture of it tomorrow morning.

In this day and age it is likely NOT thoer parents car. Besides I would LOVE to be there when they tried to explain to mommy & daddy what happened to teh car, no matter WHO owned it.
ALSO:--I learned when my kids were in school the kids had a better car than the parents--& I soon learned why---when your child HAS to drive to work & school every day (no bus service to my girl's H/S) so he/she is the one with a better vehicle instead of the parents.--Safetys sake ya know----

I like tamara's & TK's idea. both solid ones.

One time my DH built (welded) a mail box for the neighbor who was having the same issue you are. he then put it on a solid pipe & buried it deep into the ground, & teh owner cemented it in. THAT Mail box is going no-where--
PS it still looks as good as new....

I like the stone work on the bottom of your house, gives it nice character.

Wouldn't mind having your compost pile also

You should report your attacks on your mailbox to the postal authority. I had something similar happen about 35 years ago when I was pregnant and actually took the mailbox into the post office. You can just imagine a lady with a big belly carrying a big ol' mailbox into the post office. They eventually caught the kids doing it and they were fined. I can't remember, but I may have gotten some small compensation for it.

Carol

If you think that compost pile is nice you should see what it looks like now 2 and a half years later lol. I'm going to look for a picture of it. And if I can't find it I'll take another.

A permanent good looking mailbox is definitely what I want. There are enough things to maintain around here.

We can't compost here...it just doesn't work. Our winters are too cold and long..nothing decays.

I've heard tell that compost can be done as quickly as 10 days if you use a tumbler and an activator. Some of the tumblers even have heating coils. Of course I'm thinking at that point it would be cheaper to buy the compost. Me it takes about 3 years to get a pile where it's consistantly producing good compost. I think that's when there is enough bacteria to really do a job on the compost material. This year I got about maybe 20 gallons of compost. Now next year I expect to triple that amount.

My problem is that I use a weed wacker so I have to rake up leaves to add to the piles to keep them hot and then turn them to mix it all in. Since it took me 6 days at first to cut the lawn I had no time for the compost piles they were on there own. The next year it took 4 days to cut the lawn and I needed the rest of the time to build beds and weed them. This year it looks like it may only take two days to cut the lawn in which case I may be able to devote some time to the compost piles.

Tamara, I never thought about not being able to compost due to the weather. Learn something new every day.

Tammy, the main thing for me is to keep it turned, which I don't do to well in the winter. Do you put your food scraps in yours? I'm not consistent in that either. Sometimes it's just easier to throw things away. The other day I did it the Diane way. I chopped everything and put it in a blender before taking it to the compost pile. Took forever. I don't think I'll be doing that again.

Well in the summer it draws the bears and in the winter it freezes solid from October til May..so it's better just to buy it bagged here.

Oh gosh bears. I thought my cat would bother mine but so far that hasn't happened.

About as close as I come to food scrapes for the compost pile are banana peels (potassium), cleaned and powdered egg shells (calcium). The rest of my greens are leaves and grass. The browns are all leaves from the trees when they lose them in the fall. I get enough at that time to last all through the year to match the green that I can gather.

No potato peels? We eat a lot of potatoes. Dug some out of the garden for dinner tonight as a matter of fact.

potatoes grow good in compose.
However I arent liking the potato bugs going on my tomatoes.

b

I would like to have potatoes in my veggie garden. I'm so looking forward to that next year.

I ordered certified seed potatoes from Holland Bulbs and they've done the best of any I've used.

Something to remember, thanks

I dug up a bunch of potatoes tonight and roasted them in the oven. Good.

Here is the driveway bed that I started working on this year since I had an over abundance of purple irises. This is the view from the front.


And this is the view from the back of the bed. You can really see the amount of work left to do from this direction.

Right now I'm in the process of chopping down all of the trees except the cypress in the center. I'm hoping the back of it won't be too bare but then if it is I'll just end up getting rid of it too and putting a different tree in it's place. Possibly the Lacy Red Maple in the back.

The bed is going to be all purples, and blues in this bed.

That is very cute tk.

Did you put the posts in yourself also?

Your a doer. Proud of you .

PS.. the lily seeds came today..Loads of them.LOL

thanks bunch..

dodge

Slowly but surely is best..., it's coming along nicely

The fence was here where I got here. As you can see it is very much in need of painting but I haven't convinced myself I want to fight the spiders for it. I'll need to scrape and clean it good before I paint it anyway.

I'm glad the blackberry lilies arrived. They are a wintersow or fall for that matter.

It has been very slow. My problem is I want more beds than I can weed at the moment. But once the beds are cleared of weed seeds and roots I think I'll be able to stay ahead of it.

That and the herb grown covers get a good grip on the beds.

Tk

they are buggers to keep weeded. Some areas I had to demolish an put stone on them.

I see why folks put sawdust down.. But I kind of like seeing dirt.LOL

I keep moving around the beds an makin one an mowing down another.

Whatever strikes my fancy.

dodge

Ah, the story of mulch. Well with summers that can get into triple digits it's a good idea to have mulch in the flower beds to retain water for me. But my front foundation bed is very short before it becomes the house so I don't want anything wood there. I'm considering that rubber stuff but I haven't done anything yet. Because if I don't use the wood products that can break down than I have to come up with another way to refresh the soil. So I haven't really decided.

The sidewalk bed got mulched this year with really big pieces of bark which is what I like to use. It takes a number of years to break down and it adds nutrients to the soil while it is at it.

I plan to use homemade mulch from the branches of all the trees I'm cutting down for the tree bed. It's so huge there is no way I could buy enough commercial stuff for that area. I also hope that over time the thyme and oregano and other groundcovers will take over and I won't have much to mulch there.

In the driveway bed I understand the lilies like a lot of mulch so at least in the beginning I'll me mulching that will the commercial stuff.

And the ditch bed I'll be depending on the sedium, lambsear, and carpet phlox to make a mulch unneccessary.

You got the bugger figured out .Lilys keep lots of stuff out .

Good luck.

Any luck on the virus?

We just got 2 inchs of rain in about an hour.
dodge

I used bark mulch one year and had so much trouble with ants...honestly I think the ants came into the bags of bark.

I did a lot of research on mulch & houses when we moved here.
You have to use a hardwood mulch. But first you put down rock of some kind down so there is at least 6 inches between the house & your mulch. The article I read said that termites cannot get past 6 inches of rock, so even if they were in your mulch, & supposedly they do not like hardwood mulch, they could not travel beyond the 6 inches of rock/gravel...

I used pea gravel and put down about 10-12 inches between the house & where the mulched area begins. I have to renwew the 2 every other year or so, but the touch-up is easy & not too costly
so far so good.

Below is a photo of how I did my flower beds in the back.

I love the pastel brick pavers they are so cute.

The previous owner here did the gravel thing. The termites were crawling on it.

I think I want the entire two feet of bed to be non-wood. Just call me a scared cat.

Right now the only bed with a mulch that I put down is the sidewalk bed.

Very cute carol,

I am a non bark user. Dang bugs an slugs in it too..
Have to show my red lava out back.

I keep stating I love those bricks also..I have looked for them here to no avail..