Soil-Hauling and Shrub-Planting Weekend

If you want a nice landscape, it helps to marry Superman.  Last weekend - in less than twenty hours - my husband hauled twenty cubic yards of soil from the pile in the driveway to the backyard.  The kids and I helped spread it out with rakes, but he did the rest.  He also dug fifty holes for shrubs.  And he had energy for a fifty mile bike ride on Saturday morning.  Plus some running and swimming and other triathlon workouts.  "See," he told me, "this whole time you thought I was training for races when I was actually training to landscape your backyard."  I'll feel a lot more cheerful about being a single mom during five hour workouts and race weekends after this.   It's nice to be able to support each other in our hobbies.  Above is a view of the yard halfway through the soil hauling process.



Here is a view of the west side of the yard after some shrubs were planted, including some peony and prickly rose transplants.  The six 'Katherine Havemeyer' lilacs and the trees all stayed in place, but pretty much everything else in the backyard will need to be divided and/or transplanted into the new beds.  There's still plenty of work to do, and I'm hoping to get most of it done in the next two weeks before we bring in ten yards of 'dark bark fines' to polish it up. 



Here is the view of the path on the south side of the yard, looking east.  A couple of 'Green Mountain' boxwoods are waiting to be planted on the right side of the photo (hopefully I can find another one at a nursery to complete the grouping), and you can see a group of three GM (that's Green Mountain, not genetically modified) boxwoods planted on the left.  I've used three types of boxwoods, thirty-five total, to create unity and evergreen structure around the yard.  Now they all just need to grow.



Here you can see more trios of GM boxwoods at the northeast corner of the yard and a 'Green Tower' boxwood on the right.  There are also a bunch of 'Green Velvet' boxwoods placed in the beds.  GM grows into an upright oval, GT has a columnar form, and GV is rounded.  All three hold their green color fairly well in winter instead of turning bronze.  You can also see a 'Scarlet Pearl' snowberry shrub on the right.  It has pink berries all winter - yummy eye candy for the eyes on grey winter days.



Here is a view of the mounded main garden bed across the lawn.  Planting designs for other areas of the yard are coming together nicely, but this area is giving me fits.  I like symmetry, so I'm doing some of that, but I'm trying to avoid making it too stiff.  It will no doubt need some editing over the next few years as I figure out what works.



I figured out the perfect place to sit for a direct view of the main garden bed and set a few plastic Adirondack chairs there for now.  I'd like a classy wrought iron bench eventually, but these chairs are more comfortable and were just sitting in a corner.  You can see the fence is still torn apart in the background, and hoses and pots are scattered about.  This is still very much a work in process.  More photos to come!

The Manure Experiment of 2009

I have been adding composted manure to my gardens ever since I listened to my college professors expound, extensively and repeatedly, on the miracle that humus enacts on soil structure and plant health. But in 2009 I went a little farther with it than usual. Above, a hellebore leaf.


It started when WalMart reduced their prices on 1 cubic foot bags of composted manure blend. Or maybe it started way back when the builder spread 'sandy loam' over our clay-and-river-rock native soil. Sandy loam drains well but doesn't retain nutrients or water well enough to keep many plants happy. So compost was needed - lots of compost. Peony leaves showing their fall colors.


Ninety-seven cents for a bag of composted manure seemed like too good of a deal to pass up. So I picked up 20 or 25 bags each time I was in the vicinity of WalMart's garden center. I stopped counting at 200, but I think I ended up with between 250 and 300 bags of manure by September, when they stopped stocking it. I know that's when they finished because I was disappointed when I tried to purchase just a few more bags. Apparently buying manure can be addictive. Maiden-hair fern dances above various leaves in the shady garden.


This manure blend was composted well enough that it didn't have much of a smell. We spread several inches of it all over our beds and veggie garden. We even spread dusty, smelly manure from Lowes all over the front lawn, but that's another story (a success story, so I might do it again next spring). I kept spreading a few more bags here and there as the season progressed. Jack Frost brunnera leaves sparkle in the shade.


I learned a few things along the way. First, 3 inches of manure only works as a short-term mulch, because it rots into the soil within a few months. Second, worms LOVE manure. Some people pay lots of money for worm castings; I just ramped up the worm factory in my garden by laying out a manure feast for them. I dug up a grundle of worms every time I used my shovel. Lady's mantle grew like gangbusters in the amended soil.


Third, manure plus regular 10-10-10 Miracle Grow gives plants too much nitrogen and can lead to floppy growth. Especially for english roses that tend to have weak stems anyway. Next year I'll supplement my manure with a low-nitrogen fertilizer, like bone meal or Miracle Grow's 'Bloom Booster' (shh, don't tell the organic gardeners). Manure makes great leaves, though, which is why I have illustrated this post with leaf photos. Leaves of heuchera 'Green Spice' in autumn's late afternoon sun.


Overall, the manure spreading of 2009 was a strong start to the long process of creating great soil. I'm still dreaming about digging into 'chocolate cake' soil like what Dee has in her veggie garden. That requires years of amending when you start with as poor of soil as I have. But I've got help in the form of a worm army, plus the billions of beneficial microbes at work. We'll get there someday. Brookside geranium leaf.

Spokane Snow vs. Seattle Rain

Recently another blogger friend confused my hometown of Spokane (the second largest city in Washington state) with Seattle (the largest city in Washington). I had to laugh because it happens a lot. When people think of Washington, they think of Seattle. I don't mind, because at least they know the name of one of our cities. Quick - name the largest city in Wyoming. What about South Dakota or Montana? Did I stump you? I don't know, either.
For the purposes of gardening, Spokane (pronounced spo-cann, not spo-cane) is very different from Seattle. For starters, the two cities are nearly 300 miles apart. So for this post I've compiled a list of mostly garden-related differences between the two.
1. Spokane's signature precipitation is snow, while Seattle's is rain. Spokane's inland climate falls into USDA zone 5b and is influenced by the mountains that surround us, while Seattle's coastal climate is an 8. Winters are a lot colder here in Spokane!
2. Spokane gets 17 inches of precipitation in an average year, while Seattle gets 37. Seattle's air is more humid as well, since it's closer to the ocean. That means Seattle gardeners have fewer sprinkler systems but more problems with fungal diseases (blackspot on roses, etc.).
3. Spokane is rather conservative politically, while Seattle is very liberal. This leads to occasional mutterings about how eastern Washington should secede from the West, though it doesn't influence gardening much. Seattle kids probably attend computer-programming workshops on weekends, while my kids beg to spend Saturday morning at the shooting gallery in Cabela's (what kind of hicks are we raising around here?).
4. Spokane gardeners stick with cold-hardy shrubs like lilacs - we're known as the Lilac City, after all, and have a Lilac Festival in May. Seattle gardeners have many more choices in their mild climate, including camellias.
5. And speaking of shrubs, acid-loving shrubs like rhododendrons generally look pale and half-dead in Spokane, while they threaten to engulf entire houses over in Seattle. Our soil isn't acidic enough to keep rhodies (or pieris or azaleas or camellias) happy. But the nurseries here all sell them anyway.
6. The largest industry in Spokane is healthcare (we're a regional medical center for Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon, Northern Idaho and Montana), while Seattle is known for computers (Microsoft) and aerospace (Boeing). And while Seattle's most famous entrepreneur is Bill Gates, a friend of ours here in Spokane has a great side business selling authentic camouflage-print neckties. Sorry, he holds the patent, so you can't get in on the goldmine.
7. The mountains around Spokane - and many of the neighborhoods within the city - are covered with Ponderosa pine trees, while Seattle's nearby mountains are forested with Hemlock and Douglas-fir, among others. Thankfully, huckleberry bushes can be found in both areas.
8. Many Spokanites drive 4-wheel drive SUV's, which they actually need to get up steep streets in the snow. Many Seattlites drive Volvos or hybrid vehicles. Their city shuts down when they get a few inches of snow. Our city can handle several feet of snow at a time, though we did slow down, and many trees lost branches, after receiving a record-breaking 6 feet of snow within 3 weeks last winter.
9. Spring in Spokane is sooo slow to arrive. Seattle doesn't have to wait as long for hellebore blooms, spring bulbs, roses, daylilies and everything else. I'm now attempting to suppress, with only partial success, climate envy.
10. By now readers from Spokane are thinking, "Do we really have to endure MORE comparisons to Seattle?" Readers in Seattle are thinking, "People in Spokane compare themselves to us? Where is Spokane again?"
. . . three hundred miles east, 20 degrees colder, 20 inches drier, and you're there!

I Know What Manure Is. Manure is Cow Poop!

Thus proudly proclaimed my 4-year old daughter to the WalMart guy as he loaded up our car with yet more composted steer manure. She’s adorable, he chuckled. Yeah, I said, only a little girl with sparkly brown eyes, curly hair and dimples could make cow poop sound cute.
The process of enhancing our garden soil with compost this spring has been quite a project. I first considered having a local landscape supply company deliver compost to our home. Their price for compost (composed partly of manure plus other things) was $41 per cubic yard if we hauled it ourselves (not feasible) and $46 per yard if they delivered it, with a minimum $150 order for delivery. The composted manure blend from WalMart was on sale for 97 cents per 1 cubic foot bag. One cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, so the WalMart stuff came out to about $26 per cubic yard - $20 less per yard than the bulk compost. In addition, the bagged manure could be purchased and spread in smaller amounts as time allowed, while the pile of bulk compost would clog our driveway and require us to get it spread immediately. So we went with the WalMart manure.


One hundred and thirty-five bags of manure later (5 cubic yards), our family has finished the project. The kids enjoyed working side by side with Mom and Dad, and now our flower beds are covered with a several inches of compost, a thin layer of manure has been raked into the front yard grass (kind of an experiment), and our newly-rescued-from-sod veggie garden has been prepared for planting with plenty of organic material. The garden beds look as though they put on black tuxedos with their smooth layer of black compost. Applying a uniform layer of compost or other mulch really helps young landscapes like ours look clean and lovely, since the little plants leave so much of the ground around them exposed. The dark color of the compost causes the green leaves and colored flowers to pop out in contrast.


I was pleasantly surprised to find that the WalMart manure blend didn’t smell very bad. In fact, some bags even had that sweet, earthy compost smell. Obviously the manure and other inputs had been well composted before bagging. It’s always a nice surprise when the least expensive product is a good quality one.
We ended up buying some of the manure from Lowe’s. The manure from WalMart was moist and we had to break up the clumps as we spread it. The manure from Lowe’s was dry and powdery, which made it easier to spread thinly into our grass. Unfortunately, the Lowe’s manure had not been composted long enough to get rid of the smell. It really stunk! And now our front yard smells like a dairy farm, though the smell should fade away soon.


The downside to this project is our trash can full of compost bags – 135 of them. The sturdy bags will now take up space in a landfill, something I didn’t think about when we started buying them. Obviously buying the bulk compost would have been a ‘Greener’ option, though buying 5 cubic yards in bulk would have been $100 more expensive than buying the same amount in bags from WalMart. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Green option was less expensive for once?


Other than my regrets about the landfill, I’m very pleased with our project. We also spread a large amount of bark/pine needle mulch (that our neighbors were throwing away – a story for another day) around the newly planted trees in the backyard. That will help them grow both roots and branches more quickly and provide extra protection during the hot days of summer. All of my young plants should grow happily this year thanks to the increased moisture, cooler temperatures and greater amounts of nutrients that will be enjoyed by their roots. The beneficial earthworms will happily feast on the manure and spread it through the soil. And my children – including the cute cow poop daughter – have learned all sorts of things about soil and growing and how good it feels to work together as a family.

What to Do With My Blasted Stones

Apparently our neighborhood was part of a very successful stone farm in the days before the developer divided up the lots and built houses. Even though the builder spread several inches of sandy loam before seeding the grass, we find that the land is still producing stones of all shapes and sizes. Hubby has harvested countless stones with his pick axe while digging holes for trees and rose bushes.


We recycle old plastic pots to gather the stones from the flower beds. More of them turn up each time I disturb the soil to plant or transplant. While planting all the trees last fall, we completely filled up the kids' red wagon with stones. Then we had to think of a place to put the bounteous harvest.


Some of them were shoved under the front porch, but it's getting harder to fit them in as the edges of the porch fill up. A few were hidden behind the air conditioner unit, where nothing but weeds grows anyway.
Our best idea was to spread stones at the bottom of our window wells. Hopefully the layer of stones will keep the weeds from sprouting, and I think they look nice. But we can't put many more stones down there and still have the wells function as fire escapes, if needed.


I have stones on the brain because I spent all of March dealing with kidney stones. I finally had to go to the hospital to have an especially large one broken up with shock waves. I'm still waiting for all the pieces to make their painful exit. Then I can stop taking pain meds and start doing my spring gardening chores.
All of this has given me a great idea: I should perform a shock wave procedure on my soil and blast all of the stones into nice little sandy-sized pieces. Then I'd dump some compost on top and have excellent soil - maybe we could even throw the pick axe away! But that isn't going to happen, so I'll keep scratching my head as we try to figure out what to do with our regular stone harvest. Any ideas?

True love? That's bull!

About a week ago, my husband surprised me with proof of his love: a pile of cow poop. I was SO excited! Actually, the cow poop was in the form of 20 bags of composted steer manure from Lowe's. And he spread 10 of the bags into the new flower bed he had just cut out of the grass for me. That manure will rot away all winter and create fabulous soil for my plants - especially the rose bushes I hope to plant there next spring.
You see, the big secret to a great garden is - da-da-dum - great soil. If your soil is good, even cheapo plants from WalMart can thrive. But if your soil is compacted and barren of nutrients, the most expensive plants from the nursery will struggle to grow and bloom well. A soil high in organic matter (like rotting manure, leaves, or the product of your compost bin) allows plant roots to easily grow through the soil. It retains water better and feeds beneficial organisms like earthworms. You might not like slimy worms, but your plants love them.
Composted steer manure is the easiest, cheapest way to improve your soil. You can buy 1 cubic foot bags of the stuff at Lowe's, Home Depot or WalMart for just over a dollar apiece. Spread a couple of inches over your garden soil before planting. The worms, rain, sprinklers and your planting shovel will mix it in eventually, so you don't have to rototill it in. Most of the composted manure that we've purchased hasn't smelled like manure. This last batch (in green and lavender bags from Lowe's) was an exception, and our yard smells like a dairy. It must not have been allowed to rot long enough, but the smell will disappear in a month.
So here's a big Thank You to my husband! I don't ever need more diamond jewelry as proof of your love, but I'll happily take manure once in a while.