2 out of 50

Well, of the 50 tulip bulbs I planted last year only 2 survived and grew.

Sad.

I'm not sure what happened, but I think it might have been an animal that ate them. I noticed what looked like mole tunnels around it not long after I planted them. I haven't checked to see if any of the bulbs are still down there and just didn't come up.

The University of Illinois Extension has this to say about animals eating bulbs:

How can I keep squirrels or moles from eating bulbs?

Bulbs are not usually a preferred food of squirrels, moles, mice or other rodents, but they can take a liking to them. Moles are often unfairly blamed when bulbs disappear. More often, the culprit is field mice that also use mole tunnels. They most often attack tulips, crocus and gladioli and rarely eat daffodils, alliums or colchicums.

The mouse problem is a difficult one. Sprinkling dried blood, tobacco or a similar repellent on the ground is effective only until the next rain washes it away. Owning a cat that enjoys walking through your flower beds is a very effective deterrent to rodents.

Where you are determined to try bulbs, make a small "cage" of 1/2-inch mesh screen. Place several bulbs inside, root plate down and bury the entire cage at the proper depth. Rodents won't be able to chew through, but roots and stems can grow out.

Oh well.

(Note: this is a back-post, posted on 5/22/12)

A little backyard grass update

The supina bluegrass planted last year has been growing leaps and bounds. I'm starting to wonder if it will even have been worth it to have planted more seed this spring. I guess time will tell, but it seems that with each passing week, the bare spots fill in more and more. Here are some photos taken yesterday:

I have walked on it barefoot and it feels wonderful! The fine fescue that I planted only a few weeks ago also appears to be growing well:

And for the record: I never ended up putting any starter fertilizer down.

Calum Memorial Garden is in bloom

Since we purchased most of the flowers for it in spring last year, the garden is mostly filled with spring-time bloomers, so here are some photos taken yesterday:

Bleeding hearts

Bleeding hearts

Tiarella

Tiarella

Jacob's Ladder

Epimedium

The woodland phlox still hasn't quite bloomed yet, but has some buds.

These painted ferns aren't part of the Calum memorial garden per say, but are close by (and they're just so cool looking):

Japanese painted fern

Japanese painted fern

And the evil grass is...

Orchardgrass.

This is in the backyard.

That's it.

Thanks to my father in law for the tip! It's surprisingly difficult to find good closeup shots of it in a turf grass environment because it's typically grown for hay or a pasture, but I found some good photos here (I also found a good guide for identifying it, but can't find it now).

I feel like I should go back and update all my previous posts now. While I know the lawn contained plenty of tall fescue, I mistook the orchardgrass to be the same thing. Don't get me wrong, I dislike both of them in our lawn, but orchardgrass is the unkillable beast. Non-selective herbicide (like Roundup) and pulling it up are the only way to get rid of it, and pulling it up is as I have found is quite challenging.

Anyway, after two reseedings, selective herbicide applications, and hours and hours of pulling it up by hand, I have mostly eradicated just about all of the tall fescue and orchardgrass from the lawn. I'm sure some that I recently pulled will come back, but needless to say I'll continue pulling it up as long as I can see and move.

Indestructible

This past weekend, I spent the majority of the afternoon squatting around the front yard pulling up the wheat that was growing obnoxiously about. But, in doing so what I soon discovered was that 1) there was what appeared to be "wheat" in areas where I didn't have straw, 2) this "wheat" was in fact the indestructible grass I spent so much time trying to get rid of last year (I thought it to be tall fescue, but I'm not so sure, so until I know what it is, I'm just going to call it the "annoying indestructible grass", or "evil grass" for short - UPDATE: it is Orchardgrass). Seriously, this grass has shown its ability to survive everything, including being pulled up multiple times! I can now spot this grass very easily in our lawn. It has a flat stem which is lighter yellow in color and the blades are thick and smooth (also more yellowish than Kentucky bluegrass).

Evil grass

It's incredible. I pulled up all that I could find, but I have no doubt that I'll see it again soon. Next time, I think instead of pulling it up, I'll dig it up along with a 2 feet diameter hole around it just to be sure I get it all. But really, pulling it up has has to work eventually, right? No plant can survive if there's nothing left of it, right? Right??

Anyway, this is how much I ended up pulling up of the wheat and evil grass:

To the compost pile!

And this is what the front yard now looks like (as of 3/17):

This area wins the best grass award this year (so far). It's the area
on the right in front of the sidewalk in the previous photo.

As usual, the photos make it look worse than reality. The bright green/yellow patches are the weeds that I sprayed earlier in the week. I think they're dead and/or dying and have turned more yellow, making them stand out more. At least I hope so. I do see a few patches that I missed, though, so I'll have to go spray them. I'm hoping that the grass can recover from this weedy invasion, and I think it will.

The new grass that I planted last year has yet to really green up (I wonder if that'll happen every year or if it's just because it's young or something - I'm hoping for the latter!), but I'm excited for that to occur!

Ok, that's enough blogging for one day... time to sleep.

We have germination

With the extraordinarily warm weather we've been having, I'm not at all surprised to see my "dormant" seeding quickly germinate. I saw the first evidence as early as March 16th (11 days after planting):

And, even more so on the 18th:

And a lot more so today:

This is pretty impressive considering that last year I planted on this date and germination didn't occur until April 9th. The weather has been very unusual this year with record-setting early warmth, so I'm very much hoping that we don't have a late hard freeze.

Bushes pruned

I trimmed two bushes over the weekend of the 10th: the viburnum bush on the side of the house and hydrangea tree in the front. The viburnum I trimmed in preparation for executing the rest of my "plan" for the South side of the house (both landscape designers agreed that it should be trimmed back), so it now looks like this:

Viburnum after pruning

Unfortunately I didn't take a before shot, so it's hard to see what I did, but I'd say it's roughly half the size it was.

Next, I trimmed up the hydrangea tree. I did a little research before I did it. I didn't find much, but ended up using method two from this guide. I used method two because it is a Kyushu Hydrangea, which according to BackyardGardener is paniculata hydrangea. This is what it says:

Paniculatas (PG/Limelight types) can be pruned in the fall, winter, or spring. However, it is not necessary to prune them every year. It is suggested that one trim out crossing branches and those that do not contribute to an attractive form whenever necessary.

Paniculata hydrangeas are the only hydrangeas that can be pruned into a tree-form. If one is attempting to grow a paniculata as a tree, the developing trunk and main top branches should not be removed. If a panicultata that is trained into a tree-form is cut or broken off close to the ground, it will grow back as a shrub unless the training and pruning is started again from the new shoots. 

So I trimmed it down so that it now looks like this:

Hydrangea tree after pruning

Again I don't have a before shot, but I probably pruned it down by more than half. It was growing quite wildly last year, so it was due, but hopefully I didn't prune it too much. As usual, we'll see!

Crocuses are blooming

The crocuses I planted last December are now blooming. Interestingly, this occurred later than the daffodils in other areas of our yard (except for the new ones I planted in Dec). I could be wrong, but I thought that typically it's the other way around, so I'm not sure why that is. Well, I guess if you compare them to the daffodils I just planted with them, they are blooming before them, so I'm not sure why the ones I just planted are coming up later. Perhaps because I just planted them, or maybe because I planted them late. I sure don't know (as usual, please fill me in if you do!). Here are a few photos:

Crocuses in bloom

Some of the tulips are starting to come up, too:

Tulip sprouting

Yay!

I'm kicking myself

I don't think I ever mentioned it, but last year I noticed a some weeds starting to grow in various places in the midst of the front yard grass. Here's a picture from last November that shows it (click on it to view it full-sized):

Weeds last November

Not wanting to harm the new grass I had just grown and thinking that with winter just around the corner the cold would kill it off, I decided to leave it be. Boy did that turn out to be a mistake - it never died!

Weeds this March

They appeared to be growing and even flowering in some cases, so I decided to spray them. On Tuesday (3/13), I walked the entire lawn and sprayed every weed I came across with Ortho Weed B Gon (it was all over the place!). I haven't noticed for sure yet if it has been effective or not, but I hope it dies soon and doesn't hinder the grass it's invading (that will soon be greening up). We'll see.

Also surviving the winter and starting to grow again:

Happy wheat

Yep, the wheat that I unknowingly planted last year via the straw that I used. I guess I'll have to pull these buggers up by hand (or learn how to make our own bread, one of the two)...

Off to an early start

Prompted by a recent post Get your motor running: Crabgrass control adjustment on the Purdue Turf Tips blog, I put down some preemergent crabgrass herbicide this week on the 13th. The author of the article suggested shifting the management schedule up 7-10 days before normal. They also suggested a way to extend the effect of the herbicide by applying two applications 60 days apart at half the rate of a single application, which they say Purdue research has shown be 20% more effective. They also linked to an interesting site called the GDD Tracker that I don't understand in the slightest, but apparently has various models that predict the optimum timing for various applications, including preemergent crabgrass. It provides a nice map with color coding depicting the various stages. Currently, central Indiana (and most of Indiana now) is in the optimum period for applying the herbicide. So, I did. I applied 2.8lbs of the same Endure Crabgrass Preventer Plus that I used last year.

Side note: OH, I think I forgot to mention that I am now the proud owner of a scale! In case I didn't, well, I did and it's super helpful for measuring the proper amounts of stuff. I actually bought it last year and have used it several times already. Here's a picture:

My new scale

I'll plan on making the second application in 60 days, which will be mid-May.

"Dormant" seeding again...

So, on somewhat of a whim a few weeks ago (March 5) I decided to put down some seed in the backyard - much like last year, only 2 weeks earlier, but ironically it's much warmer, so there's nothing dormant about it. Go figure.

I purchased the same seed as last year: SS6000 shade mix from SeedSuperStore.com, a 80% mix of 4 varieties of fine fescues (although 2 varieties are different from the batch I got last year) and 20% Bewitched Kentucky Bluegrass.

19.96% Predator Hard Fescue
19.66% Zodiac Chewings Fescue
19.80% Garnet Creeping Red Fescue
19.85% Bewitched Kentucky Bluegrass
19.80% Intrigue2 Chewings Fescue

Unfortunately, I really didn't give the grass I planted last year much of a chance when I destroyed it with the overseeder last fall... but let's try to forget about that. New beginnings... again.

As soon as the seed arrived, I put it down. I didn't do any soil preparation hoping for some more below freezing temps to help expand and contract the soil and allow the seed get deeper into the ground. Yeah, I think there have been two nights of below freezing temps since then. One of which was the first night (one of the reasons that I wanted to get it down so quickly):

Seed on frozen ground the next morning

Otherwise it's been too warm for even below freezing nights, so due to rain in the forecast I decided to help work the seed in the ground in places where I could do so without harming the existing grass. I went to Lowes and purchased a hand tiller and tilled almost the whole lawn by hand. It took me over an hour, but I felt like I could sleep better knowing that the rain wouldn't wash or displace the seeds away as easily and it appears to have worked (granted the rain wasn't terribly heavy). It also should help the seed to germinate better (that was one of my mistakes last spring, not working the seed into the top layer of soil).

I then used the rest of the GreenView Grass Seed Accelerator that I leftover from the 2010 front yard project, but it wasn't enough so I picked some more up and put most of it down as well. This should also help with germination and hopefully help deter erosion (probably not as effectively as straw, though).

So far, I don't see any seeds germinating. I wouldn't expect it so soon anyway, but with the warm weather we've been having I wouldn't be surprised to see it either. This is how the backyard is looking as of yesterday:

And just for the record and comparison (because I think that the Poa Supina has already started greening up), these shots were from a few weeks earlier (February 27th):

Other than the small amount of fertilizer that is in the mulch, I haven't put down any starter fertilizer. I have some in the garage. Should I put some down??