The lawn gets it's first cut

The grass was about 4" tall. So I did the first cut. I set the lawnmower to a high setting so as not to do too much damage on the first cut. The grass i still very tender. The wait of the lawnmower knocked down the grass where the wheels rolled over. In a day out so it should stand back up again. Cutting the grass should make it thicken up. I will also over seed in a few days when the current hot spell passes.

Putting in the Garden Posts

The T posts are now in for the Peas Tomatoes and Beans. The Peas still need to have stings added.

Vegetable Garden is Starting to Grow

Vegetable Plot

The potatoes, peas, carrots, radish, broccoli, parsnips, beets, rutabagas, kale, spanish, peppers, eggplant, cilantro and basil have all sprouted now!

The Lawn is Sown

We finished spreading the compost on the lawn area. This was then raked level and rolled with a water filled roller we rented from Ace Hardware. We then spread the grass seed. It is a Scott's sun and shade mix seed. I bought this seed about a year ago so i hope it is still good. After the seed was put on we raked it in to the top 1/2 inch and then spread some peat moss over the top. It was then re rolled.



Lawn when it was partially raked level.


Lawn after it was completely leveled


Lawn seeded

We got a Rainbird portable impact sprinkler. It has proven to make the watering very easy as it can almost cover the entire lawn from one location.

Further Preparatipn for the Lawn

Starting to add mounds of sand and compost to lawn area

Continuing to add compost

Spread compost and ready for tilling.

The Vegetable Plot Thickens

Defining the rows 

Seeds and other miscellaneous items

More seeds sown and watered

Establishing Seeds

This year we experimented with a lettuce container for the deck. It has been a great success. We planted seed in it over a month ago and have been harvesting enough lettuce for the family for weeks. As you can see from the picture we have replanted an area to the right with more seeds. This one container could keep the family supplied with lettuce all summer. The secret to the container is that it is about 8 inch deep and has a water reservoir at the bottom. Therefore even on the driest days the plants were unaffected.

Tomato seeds sprouting - We are a little late this year but the garden isn't ready yet anyway so it will hopefully come together in the end. Ideally we would have planted these a month ago in a coldframe.

Various herbs establishing

A seed tray full of Petunias from seed that we collected last year.

Adding a New Drain

Most of the rain water from the roof would poor out over the lawn. This would form a muddy, water logged area for most of the winter. As we are re-grading our lawn we also wanted to fix this issue. We dug a trench from where the water came out to the edge of the lawn area. We put a 3 inch perforated  pipe wrapped in a filter membrane in the trench. Then we covered this with gravel. I placed cardboard over the gravel to stop the soil washing down and then covered the cardboard with the Sand compost mix. We also extended the stone shore down to where the new grate is located. Eventually this grate will be in the lawn.

If you look along the trench you will see that it gets deeper in the middle. This is because the grounds is higher there. Now that the drain is in I will re-grade the lawn so it is not raised in the middle.

The black pipe is the new drain, the white pipe is used to drain the house foundation.

Clay Soils

After we tilled some of our soil we got a very heavy rain and it turned the soil into a kind of muddy quicksand. After a few days of sun the top dried to a hard cracked cake but it was still like muck under the surface. And if you walked on it you would sink up to your ankles in mud.

We did some research on ways to help remedy this and found that adding compost and sand is some of the best things you can till in to a clay soil. We got a 60% Compost 40% sandy loam soil mix to add to the soil. We put on about 3 inches and will till it into the soil.

Hopefully that will help with general soil structure. We may put more on if it still has no structure.

Will let you know.

Tilling the Ground

We used our new Craftsman tiller  to prepare the ground for grass seed. It is fairly heavy clay soils. So far I am very happy with how well it works. I have initially set it to till about 3 inches deep and with the tines in reverse. I will comment more on it as the work progresses.

Lawn Preparation Begins

Today we worked on getting an area on the lower lot ready for grass seeding. The was a large amount of concrete rubble in one area that needed to be hand dug as the rototiller would not be up to the task.

Once the concrete was removed the ground could then be tilled.

Stacy worked the gravel into place on the path from the lower lot to the upper lot. It is actually starting to look like a path now.

Our seeds came for the vegetable garden yesterday from the Territorial Seed Company. They came really quickly!!! They arrived the day after we ordered them!!! Way to go Territorial!