Saturday, March 12, 2011

Building the Raised Beds

Today was beautiful!  Seventy and sunny... just the way I like it!

Last year we had several attempts at improving our yard.  We bought a foreclosure, but it was the builder who went under, so no one ever lived in our house.  So no one ever took care of the yard.  The front, at some point was sodded, because it's in the neighborhood covenants, but you could hardly tell.  We fertilized it with a weed killer.  I'm happy to report, the crabgrass is dead, the clover is gone... but there are these three different types of weeds still there.  Overall, our grass looks like C-R-A-P.  You see dead crab grass, tufts of real grass, dirt from where we killed the weeds off last year.


Yesterday, we pulled out a TON of rocks, some small, some rather large.  Man, there were so many more we could have dug out, but we called it good.

We have come up with a plan
Week 1:  Weed Killer (this weekend)
Week 2:  Nothing
Week 3:  De-thatching
Week 4: Overseeding with started fertilizer

That's the plan- we'll see how it works.  Hopefully by the end of the summer we'll have a healthy looking yard!

In other yard news... we started building the raised beds.  We started with the 16' x 4' bed.


6 comments:

  1. Love seeing the progress! I get it, too. Pulling rocks is awful!

    ReplyDelete
  2. We have raised beds too. watch out the crab grass will somehow grow over the side and into the beds. I HATE crab grass.

    ReplyDelete
  3. When you are finished planting, take some newspaper about 3sheets thick and place it on top of the soil and then put the mulch on top. This will stop the weeds poking through to get to the sun and you don't have so much weeding to do throughout the summer. The newspaper will break down over the winter and you can then till it into the soil for next year and repeat.

    ReplyDelete
  4. We bought a foreclosure from the builder too! We have struggled to make the yard look good for over a year. I am totally stealing your plan if it works!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. My husband is OBSESSED with our lawn and I put the kibosh on installing a sprinkler system after we re-seeded so I was responsible for watering. My advice is install a sprinkler system if you can!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. That looks like a lot of work, guess that will be all the more reason to stick with it. Good luck.

    ReplyDelete