Operation Grow Grass: Signs of Life

We have grass!

And we have weeds…

What the what?!  The ironic part is that I’ve never seen these weeds before.  We’re hoping the grass will eventually choke out the weeds and we spread a second round of grass seed this week to take advantage of the warm weather we’ve been having.  Hopefully Frankenstorm doesn’t wash it all away!

Operation Grow Grass: Plant the Seed

When we last left our quest for a lawn made of actual grass, we had sent a soil sample to be analyzed and then limed our lawn (twice) to improve the soil.  The good new is that we’re making progress towards our goal.  The bad news is that our yard looked like this the last couple weeks -

Not a good look.  What’s worse is that at this point I wish we could go back to that because after this weekend the yard now looks like this -

Horrible.  It’s a huge pile of mud littered with dead grass bits.  So how did we get here?  It all started with a little weed extermination about four weeks ago.  In our first attempt we used a product that kills weeds but spares the grass.  I think we knew deep down it wouldn’t work, but were just curious to see if we actually had some grass hiding somewhere.  In the end it didn’t work on anything and the weeds stared back at us in defiance.   After consulting with our good friends at Southern States, which we should have done from the start, we tried round two with a weed and grass killer.

They told us summer weeds are the hardest to kill so you have to use a tougher product.  And oh, it did the trick.  Guess where our lawn ends and our neighbors starts -

It killed everything except for this random chive-like plant which may be approaching cockroach status on the survival scale -

So now we had a dead lawn taupe that needed to be removed.  We rented a power thatcher to help speed things along… and it was awesome (minus the hours of raking afterwards).

The final step in prepping our lawn for grass seed was to aerate.  Again we turned to some machinery to help us with that, but this time things didn’t go so smoothly.

Let’s just say you shouldn’t aerate after it rains.  I thought we were going to have to buy the aerator after how much mud we got stuck in it.  But in the end, we FINALLY spread the grass seed that will hopefully turn into a nice green lawn that Livie can run around in next spring!

Operation Grow Grass: Lime Round II

And we’re mowing…again.

And we’re liming…again.

And we’re watering…again.

Next week, mass extermination of weeds!

Muhahahahah!

Operation Grow Grass: Lime Time

For two years we’ve been patiently waiting for our neighbors grass to invade our weed infested lawn.  It’s not looking promising.  So a couple weeks ago Brian and I sent in a soil sample to the Virginia Cooperative Extension as a starting point in our desperate attempt to grow some grass this fall.  The results are in – we need lime.  We are quickly running out of lawn prep time before we hit prime seeding season, so we hightailed it to Southern States this weekend to get us some lime.  The staff was extremely helpful and walked us through all the steps we needed to take before, during, and after planting the grass seed and exactly when we should do everything (they also have a ton of information on their website).  We found out it was best to do two applications of lime, one now and another in mid August.  We purchased pelleted lime -

Threw it in the spreader -

And are watering, watering, watering as we were instructed to do -

Now we wait until August.

Operation Grow Grass: Soil Sample

Despite our best efforts, we’re the lawn pariahs of our block.  Our neighbors all have lush, perfectly manicured, regularly watered lawns.  We have weeds.  I don’t mean we have a few weeds here or there trying to invade our grass – we have 0% grass.

On the bright side, we’re really good at growing weeds!  Just look at the variety we have -

We’ve made some weak attempts at growing grass and do a lot of talking about how much we dislike our weeds, but the last straw came this weekend when I was stung by a bee who was hanging out in the “flowers” in our “grass”.  I will not let that little bee die in vain, it’s time to grow some grass!

After doing some research, we learned that one of the most important steps in the grass growing process is to prepare your soil.  From the yard work we’ve done, we knew that ours is pretty full of clay which I’m sure isn’t the most conducive to growing grass.  Off we went to our local cooperative extension to pick up a soil sample kit so we could learn exactly what we needed to do to get our soil to love and to hold the grass we plan on planting in the fall.  First, we had to collect the samples.  We picked five random spots from our lawn, taking a sample 2-4 inches deep.

 

Then we mixed all the samples together in a bucket and poured the mixture in the sample box.

Off the box went to the cooperative extension to be tested for soil pH, P, K, Ca, Mg, Zn, Mn, Cu, Fe, B, and estimated CEC (don’t ask me what half of those things are) and in a week or so we’ll get a recommendation of what to do next!

Let There Be Light

Apparently the thing to do in the 1950′s, when our house was built, was to stick a random lamp post in your front yard.  House lights weren’t enough, you needed another light to lead the way.  Well our lovely lamp post has sat dormant ever since we moved in two years ago, patiently waiting for a little attention.  Poor little guy was left unlit, cross-arm-less and all exposed from it’s peeling paint.

We finally showed it the love it deserves and gave it a makeover this weekend.  To be honest, this project made me nervous.  It was one of those projects that in theory is sounds really easy and you think it will only take a couple hours, but then you get knee deep in the thing and realize you completely underestimated the work that needs to be done.  In this case, we had no idea if the light would, or even could, work and I was not in the mood to do any electrical work or dig up our lawn to make that happen.  So with fingers crossed we took out the old light bulb and popped in a new one and…LIGHT!  Nice.  Now that we knew the lamp post actually worked, we dismantled all it’s bits and pieces, gave it a thorough cleaning, a quick sanding, and a couple coats of spray paint.

The last step was to highlight our new pride and joy with a little landscaping and voila, we were done in only a couple hours!

The Bark Mulch Debate

I’m from Michigan.  I spent 25 years of my life thinking what I said and how I said it was totally normal.  Then I moved.  Suddenly I had an accent and used funny words. When I say “pop”, people laugh and correct me by saying “soda”.  Every time I end a sentence with “eh”, people immediately repeat “eh” back, mocking me.  And apparently any word with an “a” in it is drastically exaggerated in this mystical Michigan accent of mine.  But the great debate in our family is bark vs. mulch.  You know, that wood substance that you place around the landscaping in your yard.  What do you call it?  Well I grew up calling it bark, but Brian insists it’s mulch.  I have no idea if our vernacular difference has anything to do with our geographical location growing up, but he lumps bark in with all the other “crazy” Michigan words I use.  And to make things even more confusing, we found a bag of Bark Mulch recently at Lowe’s.  So the debate continues…

This weekend Brian and I put aside our differences and gave our front yard a face lift with a little bark (mulch).  Last year, we thought we’d be thrifty and used the free bark you can get from the landfill.  It cost a big fat nothing, how can you beat that?  And it looked great…at first.  Then it turned into dirt and looked like this -

So this year we shelled out the big bucks for mulch in a bag.  That’s right, high rollers!  We don’t have a lot of areas that need bark so we didn’t have to buy much, but it made a huge difference.  I forgot to take a whole lot of before pics, as usual, but here are some afters -

Most of the bark went in our front yard, but we have two little beds in the back yard.  One with our hydrangeas -

And one area where our blueberry bushes are.  We didn’t put the bark down here yet, I want to replace the hideous border around the bed first -

Now if only we could settle our sliver vs. splinter dispute…

Parent-scaping

Parents are the best.  When you were little and you got tired, they picked you up.  When you were a teenager and hated the world, they still loved you.  When you were in college and they came to visit, they filled your fridge with food.  And now, and the ripe old age of 31, when they come to visit I get free landscaping.  That’s right, mow-the-grass, plant-this-here, grab-the-shovel landscaping.  The first time they visited after we bought our house, they helped us tear out all the overgrown holly bushes in the front of our house (and dig out the stumps, score!).  Last year when they came for our baby shower, we overhauled all the landscaping around our house to get ready for the big party.  When they visited last week the tradition continued – not only did my dad mow our lawn (twice), he finished the border around the patio we had installed this winter.  With Riley supervising of course.

But let’s start from the beginning, shall we?  Here’s what our backyard looked like before the project began…

…right after our porch was redone and the patio was poured…

…a couple weeks ago after Brian and I created the border around the patio and did a test patch of rocks…

And finally, drum roll please…..

BAM!  Border complete!  Brian put the finishing touches on it this weekend by installing a cap on the border so someone doesn’t accidentally stab themselves if they step on it -

And then there’s this little section that we need to finish off with some sort of border, it drives Brian crazy -

I might be partial, but I love it!  Thanks for the help Dad!  Up next is putting lattice work around the porch to keep our four-legged friend and other animal visitors from camping out under our deck.