Landscaping work crew
My family wants to know why I can’t be a NORMAL mother who just wants to get dressed up and go to brunch on Mother’s Day? Instead up here, that particular holiday is Open the Garden Day. Everyone pitched in and great progress was made. We still have some cold nights ahead, but our infrastructure is all in place for seeds to be started any time.
I wasn’t going to grow even a single tomato this year (seeing that I still have a stockpile of cooked-down tomato sauce in the freezer), but my sweet Grange friend Lou brought me these.
Oh, and in the background you can see a big black plastic tarp we laid over one of the cattle panel trellises to dry it out for awhile.
Montana did a crazy good job pulling out foot-tall grass that had invaded the herb circle. You can see even around the outer edge of the rocks it is pure grass - that area is fully mulched, so that is grass invading the mulch. Steve can use the evil Idaho chemicals to knock that out, and then we will re-lay mulch. But the planting area had to be done by hand.
A few peppers courtesy of Lou and a few green onions courtesy of the Master Gardener Plant Sale to get things started.
This plan-less bed has been populated with several dozen miscellaneous perennials, and of course, bulbs. It does not yet have irrigation, and the mulch is just the straw from last year’s potato bed. I have no real plan here except to TRY to keep the weeds down (manually, because there is no landscape fabric) and see what grows/what I like.
Steve’s irrigation masterpiece. He has zones on this end and then also a separate zone for the raised beds, and he sets them on timers for alternate days. Front bed will be Montana and Elijah’s squash and zucchini (with some of the shorter sunflowers); the middle bed will be all zinnias and celosia flowers; the far bed will be corn and cosmos. All will have the landscape fabric with the pre-burned holes for planting.
In the background: the kids have been doing a good job starting to burn down the branches and limbs Montana has pruned from various old fruit trees (her favorite activity). We expect the burn ban to come even earlier than usual this year.
Extra mulch ready to add after Steve kills off the weeds and grass in the walkways.
The roses (along the fence to the right) all wintered over and look great.
We also got all of the trees and some of the newer berry plants properly mulched. Steve found some little precut landscape fabric circles that fit around the bases to help keep that moisture in. This year is predicted to be just as drought-y as the past few, so every ounce counts. #newnormal #desertliving
Tall grass around every single young tree. They need better attention if they are going to survive up here.
Start with the “zippy zippy”, one tool I am terrified of, but Steve and Montana seem to love it (though Steve says that leaned-over posture is a back-killer).
Pin down the landscape fabric pre-cut circles.
This is the cool tool and pins we use for all landscape fabric. Just place the pin in the holder and STAB it right into the fabric!
Add a little mulch, and voila.
Sammy was very interested in what was going on over by his fence.
These are a few young raspberries and blackberries. Sammy only wanted to eat the mulch. My much BIGGER problem is that if the chickens get wind of what I have done back here they will DESTROY it in 5 minutes. They LOVE to kick around mulch. I ordered some light aviary netting to set over the mulched areas that will hopefully arrive and be installed before the hens find out.
The maples and willows in front and the aspens and pears behind the shop and a few random apple trees out front all got the treatment. Fingers crossed they all have a good year. Planting trees up here seems EXTRAORDINARILY difficult!
