Bring on the Miracle Grow

For the second weekend in a row, Derek and I were out in the yard all day for two days. Who needs to watch the NFL draft when you can listen to it on the radio? It all started when my plants from Bluestone Perennials arrived on Thursday. I have been planning their arrival for awhile. I thought we had another week or two until they would come, but I was so excited when I knew these boxes were waiting for me.

After they were all unpacked

So we got up bright and early on Saturday to start. We began with the front bed since it was smaller. This bed was a challenge to choose plants for because it gets almost no sunlight. There was not much grass growing in this very shady area so we just tilled it up, and added a couple bags of compost before planting. We went back and forth about edging. Since we were dealing with the tree roots which made digging out a trench for edging difficult, we are trying the "cutting a clean line in grass" method. We will see it works.....I see a lot of weeding in my future. Here is the planted bed.....sadly the plants still look wimpy and small. But I just keep telling myself that they will grow and I should resist the urge to keep adding more. Hopefully by next year we will have a beautifully filled in bed. Or at least keep the sexy foundation from showing.

Then we moved onto the second bed in the back. If we had been smart we would have edged it this past fall and been preparing the soil by killing the grass since then. But we are not smart and we still had tons of grass growing there like pictured here-

The original (and overly ambitious) plan was to dig up the sod and move it to other parts of the yard that needed it. However after we, I mean Derek, took 15 minutes to dig up a very small section (with a lot of grunting and cursing mixed in) we decided to ditch the original plan. Next plan- rent a tiller and just till up the entire thing. But after calling around and learning that a tiller that had enough juice to cut through grass roots would need a truck to be moved, we decided that plan sucked too. So then we went to google to figure out what other idiots do who do not plan ahead. We found the lasagna method.

So I went out with my beautifully drawn plan, my yardstick, tape measure and all the plants to plot exactly where they all went. This took a lot longer than I was expecting because a) the bed's dimensions did not match the plan's dimensions exactly b) when the plants were actually in my hand I had some different creative visions and c) measuring is not my strength. After I got them all set in the correct places, Derek dug very large holes which we filled with a mixture of dirt, compost and the plant. So it looked like we were planting in the middle of our lawn since the grass was still there. After we were done with that, we laid down newspaper over the grass and around the plants. Then we dumped tons of mulch on top of it. So our planting bed now resembles a lasagna. I am hoping to till around the plants next spring and that their large compost filled holes will keep them happy this year. But I could be a gardening moron.....

Again the plants are puny and you can barely see them in the pictures. Also I forgot to order some of them so I will have to go and fill in holes later. Just picture the plants as large as they are on the plan-

But right now they look like this-

The rock thing in the back is the dog path....no pups in the landscaping!

Does Miracle Grow bring out the flavor in lasagna? Because I think we really need it.....