Also I would start easy. Maybe you only pick one plant that will flower for each month, and then you can always add more or increase the variety next year as you see how things grow and fill the space!
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Are you sure of your ID? I’d swear that’s phlox.
Pretty sure, yep! I looked at some similar species listed on this link, including local phlox, and the one in my yard has flowers with four petals. But, interested in seeing other evidence!
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Ah, sorry, I did not notice the four petals on my tiny phone. Phlox has five.
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No worries! My confirmation research led me to the Chicago Living Corridors site which I wasn’t familiar with before. Fun stuff
Around my area it’s so much more likely to be dame’s rocket than phlox… of course. It looks pretty along the back roads, but rip it out!
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Deck garden mostly in. I have one more pot to buy a saucer for. I’m going to fill it with marigolds and nasturtiums. Then I have a deck railing pot that will be growing basil.
Depending on the local soil company, we may or may not order two more custom made raised beds. We’re getting a sweet deal on the beds from an 18 year old university student. But we won’t buy them unless we have soil and compost to put in them. And mulch for the top of them.
Here’s our results so far…
Found out we have enough dead branches, leaves and grass clippings to make our own compost. Hoping Hubby agrees to this when he gets home from his bicycle ride! I’ve met mild to moderate resistance to the idea. Whatever we do, it has to be easy enough for me to manage.
Phlox everywhere here, so I saw what I expected to see.
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Certainly beats the recycled woven chicken wire and star pickets I used to use.
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Can I plant flower seedlings at about 8” tall? I feel like they are outgrowing the little pods I planted them in but I’ve never done this before.
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I’m at the tomato seedling stage of feeling defeated. A grasshopper has been munching. I asked Mr Pancakes to kill it because I can’t. Silly because I can ask someone else to do it which is still killing an animal but I can’t. We ended up with a one legged grasshopper that still munched my seedlings.
They were looking amazing after a slow start and now…
The sun is out, I’m going to plant them this weekend. At least I have extras?
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Find a Golden Orb Weaver that’s got an active web going and have Mr Pancakes throw the grasshopper into the web and let nature take its course.
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I think I’ve mentioned a few times on this forum that there are many choices that the last person who lived here made that make us say, what??
One of those things is that there is a sizable pile of sand on one part of the lawn. What do you think she was up to? The soil here is basically clay, but I can’t imagine any soil amendment advice that is “dump a bag of sand on the lawn and walk away”? I am open to being wrong, though.
Is there anything you can do in a garden with a bunch of sand? It’ll be annoying to get rid of, but we could figure out a way to get it into the garbage.
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Were you planning raised garden beds? Use it to fill those, mixed with some other stuff?
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This makes me realize I left out some key context: at this point, it’s mixed in with some ripped up grass (the sand pile was in the area where we’ll put the raised beds). So I wouldn’t want to move it anywhere that I was too strongly opposed to grass or weed seeds sprouting, so it wouldn’t be ideal for raised or garden beds. I guess I should bite the bullet and toss it into the garbage a little at a time (so it’s not too heavy)?
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Offer it up on a local Facebook group or similar? Worth a try first since it will take ages to be disposed of in the bin anyway.
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yes you should be able to! let them sit in a protected area outside for a couple of days to harden off, then they should be good to go.
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The literal only thing I could think of would be that someone had a kids sandbox there and did a shitty job removing it. Weird and annoying for you!
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Today’s progress! My lower back hurts. Gonna take a glorious shower. Goodbye, dame’s rocket!
https://illinoiswildflowers.info/weeds/plants/dame_rocket.htm
Left the hostas for now but when we pick up the native pollinator garden kit in mid June, it’ll go here. I don’t love the idea of buying mulch as a renter but it might be worth it for this area alone because we can’t control the shit the neighbors do (or don’t do) in that sliver between their garage and the fence.
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Proper rain gardens are not typically built on slopes – the idea behind most rain garden design is that you have plants that tolerate boggy conditions in the bottom of a concave area, and then the water can collect there.
For slope-y areas look at permaculture type designs for swales on contour. Even just terraces built up with lots of organic matter will do a lot to catch and store rainfall. I would have preferred a more natural/contour based approach to amending this hillside, but I have found that as long as you have the retaining blocks higher than the soil bed behind them and have a lot of organic matter mixed in with the soil, the terraces do act as sponges and control the runoff during the rainy season and then require less watering in the dry season. I have mine set up with drip irrigation which also helps reduce moisture loss (since the water seeps slowly into the soil right around the base of plants over an hour or two each watering session)
- The terraces we built on our steep mid-yard slope:
a. Original hillside, that was very sandy and eroding badly
b) Terraces newly planted right after construction in July 2020
c) Current view – the top two levels are now bursting with raspberries, and I have just planted the lower two with cucumbers and tomatoes (bottom one also has a bumper crop of strawberries coming in
- Similar principal used with the terraces closest to our house.
a) Original situation when we bought the house --very sandy/steep slope with poorly selected and positioned plants that we eventually mostly relocated
b) My first attempt at creating terraces using scavanged materials – I was happy with what I had managed to do but SO wanted something more polished/formal so we eventually pulled out what I had done and started over
c) Mostly completed terraces newly planted last summer (took me awhile to dig up enough cap stones from elsewhere in the yard and tidy things up compared to how SO left if)
d) Current view
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