New York Renovator

I’ve removed sod a few different times: through suffocation (laying plastic on a plot until the turf dies); through roto-tilling; through manual removal. By far, I think the easiest and most satisfying is through manual removal. The suffocation method takes too long and is messy; roto-tilling is hard, trying to get the machine to chew through tough turf, and then there’s the back-breaking work of picking and raking the plot to remove sod clumps (and I never seem to get them all). Manual sod removal is quick, it’s easy, and you see instant results. After you remove the first 3-5 inches of sod, you can roto-till the soil.

The best time to “bust” sod, as I call it, is a day or two after rainfall. The soil is slightly moist and the sod will tear apart easily. However, if your soil is waterlogged, the task may be very messy and muddy. Don’t plan any summer garden wedding programs anytime soon!

Get a flat-end spade. Cut a long strip of any length, and about 1 foot wide. Then, chop the strip into 1 to 2 foot sections, for easy handling.

Work up one side of the strip with the spade. Your goal is to tear the root system out of the subsoil below. It’s important to get the roots out, or else the turf will grow back. My yard varies: in some places I need only dig 2 inches down to get past the roots; in other areas, it’s 4 inches.

Use the spade to hack horizontally into and under each square section.

Pull up the section. Dump it upside down, and chop off any loose subsoil and clumps. Loosen the dirt from the roots with your hands if you need to.

This is what the section looks like after we removed a few sections.

Hacking into the sod is probably the hardest part, but I love it because it is incredible exercise. It’s a little difficult to explain with text, so we made a quick video showing how to do this.

We FINALLY got a break in the clouds and rain, enabling us to continue building our Secret Garden walkway. So far, we’ve done this in three stages. This year, we busted sod and removed a good-sized portion of the lawn, adding to this garden. And this allowed us to continue our concrete walkway. It’s looking SO beautiful! I love walking over to this area in the cool of the evening, it’s just a lovely spot. The shrubs will eventually grow up and over the arbor and the walkway, giving the entire side yard a “mysterious” and enchanting atmosphere. When this section is finally done, I think I’m going to mail out birth announcements or something, and throw a party!!!

Here are some photos.

We use the Quikrete concrete mould, and plain old Concrete mix. It works so well!

This was all last week. The concrete has now dried to nice white color, matching the rest of the walk. We will eventually build this walkway (and the garden) to fill up this entire area of the lawn, leading up to our garage area at the back of the house.

I just love this garden. I’ve been slowly adding to it for the past few years.

It’s been a soggy spring and start to summer, so I’ve had to work on it between raindrops this year. It’s a perennial garden with many native shrubs. I always plant vegetation that is native to the area (because I just hate babying plants). I’ve got Mugo pine shrubs, a Dwarf Alberta Spruce, some lilacs, blue Rose of Sharon, Scotch Rose, Bridal Wreath Spirea, Potentilla, Arbor Vitea, Mock Rose, White Azalea, and purple Butterfly Bushes for shrubs. For plants, I have Echinacea (Purple Coneflower), Rudbeckia (Black-Eyed Susan), Hostas, Day lilies, Gerbera Daisy, Stargazer Lilies, Tulips, Stella D’oro lilies, purple Bearded Iris, purple Salvia, Purple Chrysanthemums, Blue Anemone, Pink Turtleheads, Pink Monarda (Bee Balm), Daisies, and Astible. And then I have Periwinkle and English Ivy for ground cover. For filler, I add a few annuals like Impatiens and Petunias, but that’s all the annuals I do.

I have plans to eventually fill this entire side of the yard as a cottage garden, with native shrubs and perennials. It’s so easy care that it’s ridiculous. I send the kids out to weed it about 3-4 times a year– but once the ground cover really kicks in, we’ll weed less. The real benefit is not having to mow this section of the yard. And it looks lovely! Eventually, the lilacs and the Rose of Sharon will grow taller than the arbor, creating a green passageway down the side yard. Mmmmm.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have lived on this property– all acre and a half– for almost twelve years WITHOUT a lawn tractor. When I used to mow the lawn with our push mower, it took me SIX hours a week. I had to break it up into twice a week. It was grueling! After the kids got big enough, they split up the job, but it was still an arduous job. One of my neighbors took pity on us (plus he wanted us to allow his son to play touch football on our lawn from time to time) and mowed the back half of the yard with his lawn tractor. It was a good deal— he mowed, we let his kids play on the turf.

But I am thrilled to finally have my own tractor! I don’t know what took us soooo long to get one?! The kids love it. We spent some time today, teaching them how to use it.

First a lawn tractor, next.. maybe a woodstove? Maybe– just MAYBE– a new kitchen?! My world is filled with hope now! Woooo!

Remember that old hymn that goes,

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own,
And the Joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

I cannot sleep tonight, and have been visiting some beautiful gardening blogs. I realize that I’ve been so busy the past few weeks that I have neglected my gardens. Today for the first time in weeks, I strolled around the yard to see my gardens. My vegetable garden is weedy, but productive. It was not a good year for lettuce, unfortunately (we eat a lot of salad), but the peas, green beans, and squash are thriving despite my neglect.

Stray tomato plants are everywhere in the garden. Last year, I’d composted old tomatoes, and the seeds survived. They sprouted everywhere I spread the compost. I have left them to grow up between the rows, and now they are bullying the potatoes and beans. Oh well. I have a hard time getting rid of any plant and would rather just let them all grow. Thinning sprouts is an agonizing job for me.

My cucumbers are the cutest, fuzziest little things, still smaller than my pinky. I have a few marble-sized cantaloupe growing, but since we only have about 7 weeks of reliably warm weather left, I wonder if any will mature in time. Onions are poor this year, due to my late sowing and lack of rain. Carrots and turnips look good.

Well, the reason I am thinking of that hymn, one of my old favorites as a girl, is that today I got to see how my flower beds are doing. It was a lovely, colorful walk. My daughters have kept up with the weeding quite well during the five weeks I was bedridden. The weeds have only just returned because we’ve been busy with the plaster and the drywell. But my purple butterfly bush is blooming– oh the joy!

“A Boy and His Cat”

Walking down through my garden path, I realized that I must love yellow/orange and blue/purple flowers together. I hardly have any other combination. Besides the butterfly bush, I have purple Veronica, Russian sage, purple coneflower, magenta bee balm, purple iris, blue anemone, pink turtleheads, blue hydrangea, and several blue Rose of Sharon bushes. I also have a glorious stalk of Purple Loosestrife growing. All these purple flowers are woven between my orange daylilies (which have finally bloomed– they always bloom three weeks after everyone else’s and I don’t know why), black-eyed Susans, orange-red Asian lilies, yellow potentilla, and orange torchlilies. Besides a few white/pink stargazer lilies, that’s it! All together, it is quite a beautiful collage.

Here’s a shot of my pride and joy– my Red Oak that I have nurtured these past four years since it was a little twig in the ground. My house is surrounded by asphalt (being an old parsonage property); in the summer, the steamy asphalt scorches up the yard and house to unbearable levels. My precious oak will resolve that in a few years.

About the Purple Loosestrife– I stole it from a roadside swamp. Shh. I don’t care how much the treehuggers hate it, I love it. You see, loosestrife grows in wet, swampy areas, and chokes off the flow of water. But I have far too much water on my property.

I am waterlogged, actually. So I am going to plant great swaths of loosestrife in the soggy area of my yard. It is also a very colorful and pretty plant, so that’s a plus. Desperate times call for desperate measures! I am going to also get more iris, which likes its feet wet, and some summersweet, which also thrives in wet areas. Hopefully this will solve most of my water problems, before a pond forms permanently!

Here’s an interesting shot– a male peacock and his peahen flew up on top of our shed, then into an oak tree. The neighbors have a variety of birds and critters, and this pair of exotic birds likes to wander in my yard.

It was evening, and the picture came out poorly, but can you make out the iridescent blue between the leaves? They were in the tree for a few hours after nightfall, making the loudest, strangest noises. Reminded me of an owl’s “whooo” a little.