Gardening Diary – February 25, 2021

 For the seventh day of preparing the straw bales, fertilized all the straw bales using 1 cup of Alaska Fish Fertilizer in 2 gallons of water for 4 straw bales.

Continued working in the front yard.

Pink Muhly Grass

[Muhlenbergia capillaris]

Picture taken 25 February 2021.

Weeded the 2 Pink Muhly Grass beds. Add a bag of pine bark mini-nuggets mulch to the center of each of the beds. Plan to add an additional bag to each bed.

Did not weed near the edge of each of these beds. Plan to not mulch this area but adopt a monthly(?) program of spraying with a herbicide or something that kills the top of weeds.

Gardening Diary – February 24, 2021

 For the sixth day of preparing the straw bales, fertilized all the straw bales using 1 cup of Alaska Fish Fertilizer in 2 gallons of water for 4 straw bales.

Started working in the front yard.

Before:

Pink Muhly Grass
[Muhlenbergia capillaris]

Picture taken 24 February 2021.

After:

Pink Muhly Grass

[Muhlenbergia capillaris]

Picture taken 24 February 2021.

Cut back the 6 Pink Muhly Grasses [Muhlenbergia capillaris] and the Perennial Fountain Grass [Pennisetum alopecuroides].

We are discussing whether to remove the Perennial Fountain Grass, the sole survivor of the 6 grasses that were previous occupants of these two beds.

Serviceberry

[Amelanchier sp.]

Picture taken 24 February 2021.

Weeded around the Serviceberry [Amelanchier sp.].

Gardening Diary – February 23, 2021

 

Left side of the tier bed.

Picture taken on 23 February 2021.

Removed half of the green plastic fence from the left side of the tier bed. The fence consisted of 2 pieces and I removed 1 of them.

Straw bale bed #7

Picture taken on 23 February 2021.

Wrapped the fence around the three exposed sides of the half of straw bale bed #7 that contained the contents of the 2 straw bales whose binding strings were broken. Secured the fence to the 2 sets of posts reusing aluminum wire that secured the fence to the posts on the tier bed.

Right now, we plan to use initially this half of the bed for the planting of snow peas.

Gardening Diary – February 22, 2021

 

Took the cut-up palettes, which we loaded in the car on Saturday, to the Solid Waste Management and dropped them off there along with the plastic coverings.

In addition to skipping the 2nd fertilization of the straw bale beds, we decided to skip the 3rd fertilization which was scheduled for yesterday. Fertilized all the straw bales using 1 cup of Alaska Fish Fertilizer in 2 gallons of water for 4 straw bales. The manufacturer, Lilly Miller, recommends a mixture of 4 tablespoons in 1 gallon of water which translates to 1/2 cup in 2 gallons of water.

When I told Sharon what I done, she told me that we would now need to fertilize more often during the growing season. The manufacturer recommends fertilizing every 3 weeks.

Gardening Diary – February 20, 2021

 Noah and I moved the 4 palettes to the backyard. Sawed each of the palettes into 3 sections; Noah helped with the sawing by holding the palettes.

We moved the 12 pieces to the car.

Stepping stones.

Picture taken on 23 February 2021.

After removing the 6 stepping stones from the back of the car, we loaded 9 pieces of the palettes into the back and 3 pieces into the middle seats of the car.

Gardening Diary – February 19, 2021

 

Fertilized straw bale beds #1-4, #7-8. Used almost the whole gallon of the Alaska Fish Fertilizer. Sharon said that she would use only a half a gallon. Therefore, she suggested that I skip the 2nd day of fertilizing tomorrow.

Gardening Diary – February 10, 2021

Straw bale beds #1-4

Picture taken on February 10, 2021.

From a second palette, took 6 or 7 wheat straw bales to finish installing the straw bales in the raised beds #3-4.

Straw bale bed #7

Picture taken on February 10, 2021.

1 or 2 of the straw bales had broken strings and the straw was placed on the front of straw bale bed #7 and on the walkway between raised beds #7 and #8.

Back right corner of the back bed.

Picture taken February 10, 2021.

The 10 pine straw bales from the second and third palettes were placed in the back right corner of the back bed along with 5 bags of garden soil. The remaining 5 bags of garden soil were placed near the right side of the house.

Pink Muhly Grass

[Muhlenbergia capillaris]

Picture taken on February 24, 2021.

Serviceberry

[Amelanchier sp.]

Picture taken on February 24, 2021.

The 75 bags of pine bark mini-nuggets from the third and fourth palettes were placed mostly in the front yard near the places that they would be used. 15 bags were placed in the Butterfly Bush bed and the Lenten Rose bed.

Gardening Diary – February 9, 2021

 

Shipment from Home Depot

Picture taken on February 9, 2021.

Yesterday, ordered 24 wheat straw bales, 6 pine straw bales, 10 1 ft====3 bags of garden soil and 75 2 ft=====3 bags of pine bark mini-nuggets mulch,

They were brought to the house this morning and were contained on 4 palettes.

Straw bale beds #1-4

Picture taken on February 10, 2021.

Unpacked the palette that contained 18 of the wheat straw bales. Moved these into straw bale beds #1-3 and #7-8.

Straw bale beds #7-8

Picture taken on February 10, 2021.

One of these straw bales had broken strings and the straw was carried into the front of straw bale bed #7.

Gardening Diary – February 6, 2021

 

Raised beds #1-4.

Picture taken on February 6, 2021.

Finished hand weeding raised beds #1-4 and finished putting a double layer of cardboard on these raised beds.

Gardening Diary – February 5, 2021

 

Stepping stones in the Lenten Rose bed.

Picture taken on February 6, 2021.

From the car, took 6 of the stepping stones which we had purchased last month from Lowe’s and placed them in the Lenten Rose bed.

Raised beds #7-8.

Picture taken on February 6, 2021.

To prepare the raised beds to be used as straw bale beds, we put a double layer of cardboard on raised beds #7-8. Then we started to do the same on raised beds #1-4. Recall that we weed-eated the latter beds; unfortunately, there were some weeds with long tap roots that were still in the beds. Decided to remove these by hand.