Our New Herb Garden

Its been a while since I updated anything. I wish I could say I've done all kinds of really cool projects to the house in the past month but the reality is I've been kind of slacking. Through in a lot of mowing mix in an out of town wedding and some beer drinking and you end up with a month of not a lot of progress. I've made a lot of good contacts for potential projects in the past few weeks so things are good in on that front. We are still very slow at work so I don't know whats going to happen in that department, I think a lot of people are slow its just the economy. Anyway this past weekend Jessica had me help get her an area to have a little herb garden. We had the perfect area right outside our kitchen door. I had to remove the river rock we put in when we were doing the patio. I never really planned on keeping the rock there it was convenient at the time.

So a little shoveling and about 6 wheelbarrels of rock later.

We were down to bare dirt. We needed to add a little good topsoil so off to Lowes we went. Three bags of Miracle grow garden soil later we had enough dirt. I must say that Miracle grow stuff is expensive but if you like your plants to grow crazy fast its money well spent. We took a trip to Family Tree Nursery to stock up on some herb's. So I think the herb run down is chives, oregano, basil, rosemary, cilantro, mojito mint, and dill. Couple bags of black mulch to top it all off and here is our little herb garden.

What a difference a year makes.

5-21-07

This is the same area taken this morning May 21, 2008. I just got done putting down about 3 yards of mulch but I didn't have time to clean the concrete. Its amazing how quick some plants grow. That red twig dogwood is taking over and we even trimmed a few feet off of it last year.

A shot of the Bamboo, its hard to see many of the new taller stalks they havn't fully leafed out yet. Try taking a look at the picture a little large. The tallest stalk is about 5'6" I was hoping to reach the six foot mark this year but we came up a little short. It did spread like crazy I'm guessing we have 40 new stalks this year. Next year we should really take off. In a few years we probably won't be able to see the white house next door.

We decided to give Horsetail Reed a try this year in screening out the pool pumps. Its supposedly evergreen and a perenial so hopefully it will survive the winter in the pot. Its really cool almost like bamboo without leaves. It should spread to fill the planter really quick and get 3'-4' tall in no time.

We got the CB2 planters set up on the corner of the patio. We went with castor bean plants in the pots, they have very nice large tropical leaf and grow very quickly. Those should get to be pretty tall by the end of the summer. They are one of the most poisonous plants out there so no matter what I tell you don't eat any part of the plants. If I could grow grass as well as every other plant we would have it made.

Greening Up

Greening up the backyard

I don't have any pic's to share yet but I thought I would let you know that Jessica and I got a ton of plants in the backyard over the weekend. We are slowly getting it planted up. Its hard to pick what to put where especially before you see how each plant changes through the seasons. We got some really cool planters from CB2 so I'm currently looking for some plants to put in them. If you have any advice please let me know. The bamboo is growing we had four shoots come up over the weekend and they are all right together so I think we could have a bamboo explosion shortly.

Here is a pic of the planter from another blog. I really like the ferns and we may be doing that in our planters. I also like the Eero Aarnio puppy from CB2 as well. Jessica thinks I'm absolutely crazy and that its stupid. But I have the go ahead to buy one if it goes on sale.


I added another blog to the blogroll you should check them out. Blue Ant Studio

My Yardworking Pal

Well last night I was working on filling some of the holes in the yard and attempting to get something other than crabgrass to grow in the back. After working for an hour in one area and moving a bunch of clods of grass. I stepped back to admire my work, its then that I noticed my little pal who had been helping me. I believe I was standing on him for a while, I don't know how I missed him.....aparently his camoflage is better than my eyesite. Needless to say he didn't fair to well after my fat butt used him as a stepstool, but I think he's going to be able to pull through. So I picked him up and moved him to a safer part of the yard. Jessica was horrified so I had to explain all the good things he was doing for our backyard. Hopefully he learned his lesson and while stay out of harms way from now on.

Planter Update!

Well last weekend Jessica and I started early and picked up the plants for the planters I made. We got them all planted up just in time for some good rain on Sunday. They look a lot nicer with some foliage in them. I ended up going with a pretty simple solution of lining the planters with 3mil trash bags that I stapled to the planter and poked a few drain holes.

We ended up going with a mix of Canna Lily's, Coleus, and Sweet potato vine in the planters.

One of the Canna's has already bloomed, and the others aren't far behind.

This is how the large planters turned out to screen the pool equipment and a.c. condenser. That's Purple Fountain Grass, and a little bit of sweet potato vine. The grass should get a couple of feet taller and a lot more dense so it should completely screen this stuff out.

Planters

Well a quick update. Last weekend we got some more planting done, and the rest of the mulch spread. Jessica mowed the front yard, it was our first mow of the year. I worked on finishing the planters we needed, you may remember prototype #1 from a couple of weeks ago. We now have 3 - Large square planters, 2 - small square planters, and two large planters to screen the pool equipment. If the weather is nice hopefully we can get them planted this weekend. On another note, we only need one vote to tie and two votes to take the lead on the Remodel Blog and Win contest. So if any of you haven't made it over to vote the link is on the right.

In Bloom

Well our first daylily bloomed this week. The plants are really starting to take off.

We also picked up a Tiger Eye Sumac this week. Its one of my new favorite shrubs. It holds the color you see here all summer and then in the fall turns to a yellow, orange, and red mix. This one is going right by the front door, it actually matches the color we painted the door so thats an added bonus. Hopefully we will get a lot done this week and have plenty to post next week, we actually have to mow the yard for the first time and catch a few rays by the pool.

Last of the Trees

Well over the holiday weekend I got a lot accomplished. I met up with several friends who came in town, many of whom came by to check out the place. If you notice the garage has been painted, thats just the primer. Doug and the guys finished up on tuesday, so now the garage matches the house and it really looks a lot better. So if any of you need a good painter let me know.

I planted the last of the trees on monday. Its a whitebud (a Red Bud w/ white flowers) and it is 2" caliper. It was a pain in the *** to get it into place. I would guess that it weighed 300-500 pounds, I knew I was in for a workout when I couldn't even budge it in the back of the truck. So I positioned the wheel barrow at the back of the truck and rolled it out. It was heavy enough to bend the side of the heavy duty wheel barrow.

I made it across all of the steps and around the pool, then I lost it. I paused to take a picture so you all could see how close I came to depositing the tree into the pool.

This is the final picture of it in place, you can notice that the fence has been stained with sikkens. The landscaping is slowly coming together. I also put in 6.5 yards of mulch over the weekend, it made a big difference with the way things look. I'll try and post some more pictures later in the week.

It's Alive!

Well I got the bamboo barrier installed this weekend. It took a lot of digging, I think I dug for about 8hrs to make the trench. We went with 24" deep 60mil plastic. Jessica and my brother helped me get the liner cut and in place. Then I spend another couple of hours shoveling all of the dirt I just dug up back into the hole.

I don't see anyway the bamboo can go through this stuff. I think it could only go over or under it. Next weekend my brother is bringing me another load of mulch and we are going to mulch the bamboo. Hope this makes the neighbors happy because it was a royal pain to dig this in.

If you look really closely you can see the bamboo sprouts. Its growing super fast the tallest stalk grew about 5 inches over the weekend.

Prototype #1

Well after we looked and looked for some nice planters for the house, we found several of them but they were ridicously expensive. So I took a look at the pile of cypress siding we have left and decided to make our own. After pulling alot of nails, squaring the planks on the table saw, planing down the siding to get to some fresh wood, and then constructing the first prototype. The pecky cypress looks really nice once its cleaned up. I'm halfway through makeing several more of them. I don't really know how many I'm going to make.

The updated my profile on the blog competition and wrote a little deal to summerize what we've done. I thought they did a really nice job.

Grass is slowly filling in.

As you can see the grass is slowly filling in. These pictures are from last weekend and its filled in quite a bit sense then. I may have to mow this weekend, don't worry I didn't miss mowing at all. Some of you may notice that the coral bark maple I planted in front didn't make it through the frost we had in March. So during my bi-weekly trip to the HD I noticed they had some really nice jap. maples on sale. So I made the purchase and after having my brother drive down to help me pick it up and get it planted it appears to be doing really well. Its a "Fireglow" Japanese Maple for those of you want to know.

The japanese maple around back survived the frost, and has come in nicely. I'll try to get some picks of the bamboo this weekend. The first sprouts I transplanted all died which I found out is normal. I found a really helpful forum if any of you have bamboo questions http://www.bamboocraft.net/forums/index.php Just like they told me this week I have noticed several new smaller sprouts of bamboo, they are roughly the diameter of a pen. One of them has grown over a foot in the past four days. The fence and garage are going to be stained/painted starting this weekend. Since not to many of you commented on your recomendation I guess you will have to just wait and see what I do.

Moving Dirt

These pictures are from a two weeks ago. We got a load of dirt so that we could bring up the level of the dirt around the patio in back. I luckily had some help from Jessica, Steve, and Chris, or hauling all of that back there would have been even more of a chore.

I got the bamboo planted, and it has already started to grow. I've ordered a 60mil rhizome barrier over the Internet and it should be here any day now. So then I will have to dig a 24" deep trench around the bamboo, to try and contain it. The bamboo I ended up with is "Yellow Groove Bamboo" and it should reach a height of anywhere from 15' - 25' in height, I'm hoping it will stay around 15' and that the rhizome barrier will work. I took the new growths from a friends house so I'm not quite sure how it will look this year but everything I've read says in three years this thing will be at full size and really thick.

One of the culms starting to grow. This one grew about 6inches in the first week I had it planted. We actually got another type of bamboo for the other side of the yard. I'll post some pics of it once we get it planted.

To Bamboo or not to Bamboo

Sorry to misinform all of you, the blogging contest doesn't start until May 1st. So you will have to wait to vote, hopefully I can swing your vote my way in the next month. I got a comment from Don Drummond's daughter Diana so I guess that's some sort of weird irony that the family who originally built my house has been up on the progress of my family rebuilding it. Not a lot of big changes have been made lately, I'm in that stage were not a lot has been going on but the place isn't look good enough to take some final photos.....so bear with me. I've been diving headfirst into the landscaping, I don't have as much experience in this field but I guess you could say I have an eye for the way I want things to look with the different layers of plants, colors, heights, textures etc. So it just take me longer to find the plants that I like. We have picked out a couple of Japanese Maples to get the ball rolling. The biggest landscape question at the moment is we have to decide if we want to try and contain some running bamboo. It provides the quickest screening, and the look we want. It will allow our backyard to be completely private, with no views to or from other houses. I'm looking at screening the white house completely with a patch of bamboo. I 'm thinking of trying to try and contain it by burying several 30" diam 36" deep sections of plastic culvert pipe. I found a guy who's willing to give me some yellow groove bamboo, so the price is right and the look is right but it grow s to a height of 30ft. And a s you can see that's right into the power lines, so I will have to trim it every year, the nice thing about bamboo i s once you trim it that stalk doesn't grow any taller, so I would only be trimming the new stalks. Le t me know what you think .