Welcome Back, Get To Work
Crabgrass Farm
Last week we traded in our work boots for flip flops and headed down the shore. This was a week of sun and sand, mini golf and ice cream cones, and we loved every second of it. By the time we got back from New Jersey it was dark, so the next day we woke up to this:
In case you were wondering, it takes one week for crabgrass to take over bare soil in July in Massachusetts. When we left, there was nothing there. I suppose all that green gives a sense of what the back lawn will look like when it's filled in. Before vacation we had been debating rakes vs. rototiller for preparing the lawn surface, but all the crabgrass made the decision to go rent some big guns a no-brainer.
Tilling the Fields
Driving to the Seabrook Home Depot sucks on a Saturday afternoon thanks to the beach traffic. We tried to avoid it by going to Kelly's, but they didn't believe the rototiller would fit in the hatch of a Ford Focus. So at the Home Depot we were able to get the rototiller and bring it home in this monster:
It's so big it beeps when you back it up.
After getting the rototiller down the steep, scary ramps that came with the truck, Kirk fired it up and got started busting sod. Ok, so there wasn't exactly sod, but that crabgrass was big, and it puts out an incredible root system in a short time. Still, watching Kirk manage the machine over roots and rocks was like watching someone driving a team of horses.
In this picture he's kind of pushing it forward, but there were plenty of times when he was leaning back in a "Whoa, team" stance. He called it his "Electric Pet and Patty." I think actual horses would have been easier, since Kirk was pretty sore after tilling the whole back and side lawn sections.
After the tilling was done, we used our heavy garden rakes to smooth the soil: knocking down high spots, filling in ditches, and cutting roots back below surface level. We also had to finesse the grading around the edges of the brick so there is more of a grass ramp and less of a giant step off the bricks and into the lawn.
Next, the seeding, which was significantly easier than the tilling:
That's like a nice, shady stroll.
We took advantage of the giant truck and went to Newburyport's Tree Dump to get more (free!) compost. We have our own piles started, but they aren't really ready yet, and we need a LOT to cover over the new seed. We shoveled and shoveled and shoveled it up into the truck, and when we got back to the house we shoveled and shoveled and shoveled it all back off the truck.
I wish we had a person in this picture for scale, but our best guess is that this is about a yard or a yard and a half of compost, which is just shy of a ton of material. And we moved this ton of compost a third time as well: we loaded it into our shiny new wheelbarrow and pushed it over to the lawn, then sprinkled it—one little shovelful at a time—over the grass seed. This acts like an organic mulch and fertilizer combo, and we've had good luck with it in the past. But holy crap does it take forever to cover 2,100 square feet this way! Still, compared to the bricklaying this was nice, quiet work that felt a lot more like gardening and a lot less like working on a chain gang.
Three hours and 20 wheelbarrowsful later, we hooked up two 100-foot hoses to the faucet manifold and got wet experimenting with how best to lay out our sprinklers to cover the whole area. It turns out the manufacturer's description of the sprinklers' coverage was somewhat optimistic, but we can get the whole area watered without moving anything if we do one side at a time. (There's not enough water pressure to run both sprinklers at the same time.)
Now it looks pretty again, with nice, dark dirt and our ersatz water feature. All of this took two days (Saturday and Sunday), and I'd like to say we felt a major sense of accomplishment at crossing something off the to-do list. Alas, there is still that strip of lawn along the side of the garden that we rototilled but just couldn't get seeded, having run out of both time and energy. Our awesome white trash solution?
Cover that shit up in black plastic to keep out the weeds until next Saturday.
Last week we traded in our work boots for flip flops and headed down the shore. This was a week of sun and sand, mini golf and ice cream cones, and we loved every second of it. By the time we got back from New Jersey it was dark, so the next day we woke up to this:
In case you were wondering, it takes one week for crabgrass to take over bare soil in July in Massachusetts. When we left, there was nothing there. I suppose all that green gives a sense of what the back lawn will look like when it's filled in. Before vacation we had been debating rakes vs. rototiller for preparing the lawn surface, but all the crabgrass made the decision to go rent some big guns a no-brainer.
Tilling the Fields
Driving to the Seabrook Home Depot sucks on a Saturday afternoon thanks to the beach traffic. We tried to avoid it by going to Kelly's, but they didn't believe the rototiller would fit in the hatch of a Ford Focus. So at the Home Depot we were able to get the rototiller and bring it home in this monster:
It's so big it beeps when you back it up.
After getting the rototiller down the steep, scary ramps that came with the truck, Kirk fired it up and got started busting sod. Ok, so there wasn't exactly sod, but that crabgrass was big, and it puts out an incredible root system in a short time. Still, watching Kirk manage the machine over roots and rocks was like watching someone driving a team of horses.
In this picture he's kind of pushing it forward, but there were plenty of times when he was leaning back in a "Whoa, team" stance. He called it his "Electric Pet and Patty." I think actual horses would have been easier, since Kirk was pretty sore after tilling the whole back and side lawn sections.
After the tilling was done, we used our heavy garden rakes to smooth the soil: knocking down high spots, filling in ditches, and cutting roots back below surface level. We also had to finesse the grading around the edges of the brick so there is more of a grass ramp and less of a giant step off the bricks and into the lawn.
Next, the seeding, which was significantly easier than the tilling:
That's like a nice, shady stroll.
We took advantage of the giant truck and went to Newburyport's Tree Dump to get more (free!) compost. We have our own piles started, but they aren't really ready yet, and we need a LOT to cover over the new seed. We shoveled and shoveled and shoveled it up into the truck, and when we got back to the house we shoveled and shoveled and shoveled it all back off the truck.
I wish we had a person in this picture for scale, but our best guess is that this is about a yard or a yard and a half of compost, which is just shy of a ton of material. And we moved this ton of compost a third time as well: we loaded it into our shiny new wheelbarrow and pushed it over to the lawn, then sprinkled it—one little shovelful at a time—over the grass seed. This acts like an organic mulch and fertilizer combo, and we've had good luck with it in the past. But holy crap does it take forever to cover 2,100 square feet this way! Still, compared to the bricklaying this was nice, quiet work that felt a lot more like gardening and a lot less like working on a chain gang.
Three hours and 20 wheelbarrowsful later, we hooked up two 100-foot hoses to the faucet manifold and got wet experimenting with how best to lay out our sprinklers to cover the whole area. It turns out the manufacturer's description of the sprinklers' coverage was somewhat optimistic, but we can get the whole area watered without moving anything if we do one side at a time. (There's not enough water pressure to run both sprinklers at the same time.)
Now it looks pretty again, with nice, dark dirt and our ersatz water feature. All of this took two days (Saturday and Sunday), and I'd like to say we felt a major sense of accomplishment at crossing something off the to-do list. Alas, there is still that strip of lawn along the side of the garden that we rototilled but just couldn't get seeded, having run out of both time and energy. Our awesome white trash solution?
Cover that shit up in black plastic to keep out the weeds until next Saturday.
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