A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 Plans for yard- PICTURE HEAVY

OK, so I took some newer photos & added new text, to give you an idea of what I'm working with.






2nd post to follow with more photos.
Meg

We also plan to do an addition of a dining room & garage to the street.. so I won't have as much sun later on..







That's about it for now I think. I'm supposed to be working on loan stuff right now!
Meg

PS- what do I do with all the grassy dirt I dig up? That's a lot of dirt to get rid of...

Meg

you can either put it in the compost pile (have to bust it up for that.) or stack in stacks on the edge of your yard and post free grass on there.

Do you know someone who just moved into a new house? Grass plugs are easier to get started than grass seeds.

what do I do with all the grassy dirt I dig up? That's a lot of dirt to get rid of...
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Why are you going to dig it up and get rid of it? Is it contaminated or something? If you get rid of it just to get rid of the grass you're disposing of the topsoil. Not easily replaced. May i suggest, at worst, spraying it with glyphosate and then turning the soil over sfter the grass is dead to prep the gardens, and at best, covering with chook poo, then cardboard or paper and topping up with very thick mulch. You can get more involved than this but that's the basics. Either way. Topsoil is a finite resource and you will need to replace it one way or the other.

Thanks for advice on that for the topsoil. I really had no idea how I was to use all the grassy clumps (very weedy too, so didn't want to think of all the weeds popping back thru it.) Of course, there's still TONS of roots poking thru the soil where I dug up that area.. my yard is hardly much in the way of grass, the weeds are taking over big time. If I'd planned ahead on this (thinking of doing it the end of this gardening season), I'd do a lasagna bed.. so it'd just be ready to plant in without doing any real digging. I don't really have time enough for that to work for me.. unless I do a lot of really raised areas, which I just can't see me doing this year. We have too many hopeful plans (all depending on how our loan works out.)

So, what's a good thing to use to make the topsoil good to put back in, and not have all the grass/weeds?

Meg

It's looking good, I cant wait to see it when your all done I agree I would try to knock off as much dirt as I could and throw away
the grass

I did end up breaking up the clumps by hand, and using as much of the dirt as I could, and tossing the grassy weeds into piles along the fenceline, in corners, etc. LOL. I spread about 20 bags of compost (40 lbs. each) over the area, and turned it in with the existing clay I have. I've mixed it about 3 times now, and just made up some rows that I'll start planting in one day this week, I hope. Here's a photo of what it looks like now.. and I made it wider by about 4 feet or so.

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I'm going to put corn all the way on the first 3 rows on the far right, and on the left & middle I'll have tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, and carrots. I hope.

Meg