Our little property received a little touch of spring today to go along with the warmer weather. The garden tractor came sputtering out from its confines and the snow blade came off. The mower deck got placed on it, and the lawn got mowed for the first time this spring. Most of the lawn didn't look like it needed it, but then again... other parts look rather scraggly - kind of like an adolescent trying to grow mutton chops and can't quite get it done.
There's a method to this madness though. The lawn needed to be trimmed to even it out and clear it up a little because today a large pile of stuff got plopped on the walkway. Namely: a skid of pelletized lime, two bags of fertilizer, some Landscaper's Mix grass seed, and a rented over-seeder.
Oh yeah... an orange bag of cat food peaking out from under the pile there too if you look closely. Anyway, our property was formerly owned by a gentleman who lived to be 101 years old. He had this house built in 1940, and until we bought it in 2011, we are told that he was the only owner all of those years. During his elderly years many of the maintenance issues of the property were not taken care of, so we are trying to improve upon things here slowly but gradually. Last year we took out three trees in the front lawn, and dug up the roots with a backhoe, and put in a garden. We also uprooted dozens of old bushes. With all of the digging around, we decided to just start over and put in a new lawn, so we had the neighboring farmer come in with a tractor and rip up the entire lawn with a disc. We worked the soil, and replanted the lawn. It came up beautifully at first, but then in the middle of the summer we had a drought. Due to the dryness, our new grass withered, but some nasty crab grass took over en masse. It looked pretty bad. Towards autumn, the cooler weather killed the crab grass, but the damage was done. Our new lawn was destroyed. We over-seeded with Landscaper's Mix, and some of it did come up before winter.
Fast forward to the present. Now it is early spring. The grass is just starting to show slight evidence of life again, and a few weeds too, but no crab grass yet. It's still too cold at night for crab grass. Now is the time to plant grass here on Main Street! Get it in the ground, and get it to germinate before anything else has the greater advantage. Hit it with a little fertilizer just as it's germinating. Hopefully we have some rain soon to help that process along. This soil has undoubtedly been treated with anything for many years, and has endured acid rain and been depleted of its nutrients. We will build it up by attempting to correct the pH with a buffer (lime), and adding fertilizer. Later, after the grass is germinated, we will see what is happening. If the grass is choking out all of the weeds we might just let it alone, but I doubt that will happen. We will probably help it along with a crabgrass control and/or broadleaf weed control. What we really hope for this year though is rain. The grass will not thrive without rain.
Another thing that got dumped on our little property today is two loads of mushroom soil. Those were dumped in the garden. Good ol' Berks County! They grow mushrooms here, sell them in a Berks County based grocery store (Redner's Warehouse Markets) so we can put them on our pizza, and then we buy the soil they grew them in so we can use it to grow more stuff. It looks here like the pile covers almost the whole garden:
But then again, maybe not:
It still looks like a lot, but until we spread it out and work it in to the ground, it really won't be that much. The intent here is to enrich the soil so we have a better garden. We hope to have someone come in the next week or so, and us a plow to rip up the ground a little deeper than it has probably been turned in several decades, and put this mulch underneath there. Then we'll rototill it all together, and plant garden for the spring.
With all of that said, today was a busy day here, and not all of this stuff got finished. Only about half of the lime got spread. The rest of it will have to wait for another day. The fertilizer will wait until the grass seed is just starting to germinate. And the mushroom soil is still in big piles; it did not get spread out over the garden yet. The 50 lb. bag of grass seed did get planted, and the extra 25 lb. bag that was bought "just in case" will get returned.
Some stiff and sore muscles were sustained, but it felt good to get out in the sun and work. Kelly weeded a flower bed when she got home from work, and helped out for a while. We'll see what happens to the landscape this year, but hopefully it turns out better than last year. Considering that our hands touched the garden, the flowerbeds, and the lawn, I'd say we had a Landscaper's Mix today.
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