Golden Green - My Happy Hobby
Do you have a special talent that you naturally thrive at? Something that you passionately enjoy doing that energizes you, where others would end up worn out? My personal “Happy Hobby” is landscaping!
Whether that involves digitally designing a gardening project, or having my “golden green thumbs” in the dirt, I absolutely love landscaping. It may sound a bit crazy, but I can recall as a child having the chore turned hobby of maintaining our family homes garden beds. While I don’t necessarily enjoy every part of landscaping, particularly when it involves the pulling of weeds, I thrive off of most all else. This year, I invested in my hobby by acquiring several horticulture certifications. Here’s the deal, learning and developing as a gardener is a consistent process. There is always more to learn to improve your skills. When I’m in the garden you can think of it a healthy escape, not to be confused with the unhealthy trait of “escapism”. I see my garden time as a therapeutic retreat that doesn’t require me to leave home or even the city. If need be, a trip to Lowes or Home Depot may be required. I call that good shopping. Grocery shopping, that’s the real chore.
LAWN MAINENANCE
In my personal opinion, ones lawn is just as important as ones garden. It accentuates your home and ties everything together. The key to a good lawn, while there are many factors, is the nutrients you feed it and the soil absorbing them. Rule of thumb when addressing your lawn is knowing what type of soil you have. There are kits available for purchase that enable you to test your pH levels, which will show you just what your soil is missing and what’s needed to bring about a healthy lawn. Truth be told, I just follow my same regiment every spring and maintain quarterly from there. Firstly, every lawn needs to be aerated. Aeration is like gut health to the human body. Without proper gut health, and I’ll add healthy intestines, your body will struggle to absorb the nutrients from your food. This will leave your overall body lacking or deficient in nutrients. As a result, your skin, hair, nails, and eyes will grow dull and lacking in elasticity, durability, and brightness. Its the same thing with your lawn. I personally don’t use them, but there are many different aerators machines. Some involve concrete cinderblocks strapped to a rolling non powered aerator that has spikes covering it. These are relatively inexpensive and don’t require fuel, just man power. But if you do want something more powerful, there are gas and diesel powered machines that get the job done as well. The goal of aerating is to open the ground up to reintroduce oxygen to the soil. The holes or plugs pulled from the lawn leave room for nutrients to get deeper into the ground where previously the ground was compacted or in the case of clay soil just too dense for the nutrients to penetrate. Lastly, if you don’t want to work with any large equipment, you can get a back pack sprayer and a liquid aerator. This is my personal choice as it simplifies the process and doesn’t require me storing more bulky equipment. If you are that lawn guy, you may want to incorporate the machine and liquid aerating. Secondly, a healthy lawn will appreciate being dethatched. Excessive dead grass will build up over time and this can have a negative effect on your lawn. Again, machinery. This one you will need a machine but they can be rented if you would rather avoid purchasing equipment.
Following these steps which usually should be done in the spring and fall, fertilizing! This is where that rich color comes from! Prior to putting down fertilizer, I walk my lawn and manually remove any large weeds. Get yourself a nice spreader to disperse, a slow releasee granule fertilizer. Some of you will prefer to go all liquid and that’s okay as well. I purchase the 5,000 sq/ft bag for my lot. You want to be careful not to over spread as you can burn your lawn with too many nutrients being introduced all at one time. I rotate between Scotts and Lesco ferilizers. 15 – 0 – 15 is a good place to start for greening up your lawn. Lastly, I’ll overseed my lawn with Pennington brand Centipede grass seed. You want to be sure you have your correct grass type before overseeding or you will end up with multiple types of grass competing with one another. Not pretty! Finally, to maintain that nice green, quarterly, I’ll spray a product called Ironite which refreshes the lawn and restores that nice deep green color. Ironite recommends that you spray essentially every 2-4 weeks, but I just do it quarterly until the cold roles in and I let the lawn rest. Over all, this has served me well.
GARDEN BEDS
I won’t cover everything here. We ‘ve got plenty of time and future articles to cover the various topics in gardening. The shape of your garden bed, should compliment your home. If you don’t have an ultra modern home, I would encourage having some rounded edges on your bed shape. Just as a safe standard, garden beds with curves in them are more appealing to the eye. After deciding your garden bed shape, which can be set with a garden hose and spray painted on the ground prior to digging the garden bed shape, choosing a soil that is well draining while still holding moisture. I like to add in some organic matter to my multipurpose soil like peat moss. This will help with moisture retention. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t have options regarding a border. There are many options. Whether that’s using man made stones, natural stones like river rocks and/or boulders, poured concrete forms, or just a simple metal divider hidden in the ground to keep the lawn from overtaking your garden bed. The sky is the limit when it comes to garden bed design. Apart from this, I would highly recommend placing a gravel path behind your beds that are adjacent to the foundation of your house. As much as I love gardening, protection the investment that is your house and its foundation takes precedence. You want to keep water from building up against your foundation. A gravel path or if you’re in for the investment, installing French drains can do you a lot of good as they divert rain water off to the sides of your house and away from the foundation. Last on the list for the basic establishment of your garden beds is choosing a mulch of your choice. Again with the choices! There are rubber mulches, cedar mulch (my personal favorite), red mulch, deep brown mulch, and even black mulch. I personally like how black mulch looks, but you’ll notice that the sun fades its color most noticeably. To each his own.
PLANTS! I’m sure you’re thinking by now, “Doesn’t something have to go in that garden bed!” lol The plants are the play ground! When you’re choosing your plants, you want to make sure you’re choosing plants according to our region. A plant not cultured to your region can make it, but unless you’re an avid gardener prepared to pay extra special attention to your plants, I would stick with what is native to your region. Next, know what the lighting conditions are for the garden in consideration. If you have a garden bed with full sun exposure, its best to stick with plants that can sustain full sun. If you place plants in need of full shade in full sun, they will eventually end up with burned foilage and will never thrive. Fish out of water? Yep. You have to see plants as you would children with special dietary needs. If you give a child with peanut allergies a peanut butter sandwich, that child is going to the hospital or worse yet could be at risk of dying. Sound extreme, but its true! You have to know the individual needs of your plants in order for them to succeed. Watering needs and light conditions are a good starting point for this. Plant plants with similar needs besides each other. Next I would like to add the importance of knowing whats going on beneath the surface of the soil. If you plant a shrub or tree close to your house, the roots over time could end up growing beneath the foundation and creating costly issues down the road. Its best to not plant trees and large shrubs close to the house. No matter how “pretty” it may look now, over time it will become a headache that you nor I want to deal with. One of my life mantras I desire my best to live according to is “disaster prevention”. In gardening, this begins before the plants are ever chosen let along placed in the ground.
No matter what, there is a way to get the look that you want. Just follow the plant “cardinal rules” I just listed and with some hard work and intentionality, you will have a thriving garden in no time! Again, I could ramble on and on but for now, I think I’ll call it a day. Till next time.
