Friday, February 12, 2010

Taking out Turf - Putting in Beds

I am removing sections of lawn from my front yard and putting in flower beds that will consist mostly of strawberry patches, pumpkin vines, lantana and wildflowers. The idea is to replace high water use lawn with mulched flower beds and indigenous, drought tolerant plantings:



I am also putting in a low pressure sprinkler system:



That is supplied by a shallow well and a one horsepower water pump:



In this area, using water from a pump is much more efficient economically than using city water for irrigation. The water table is not far - the Ashley River is only about 300 yards to the north. To fill out the flower beds I picked up 2200 lbs of high quality compost mulch from the city, which comes from yard clippings - I was surprised at how rich and clean the compost turned out to be:



The most difficult part was digging around and cutting out the tree roots from the large, mature oaks in the lot - I tried to put the PVC in as far from the tree as possible so as to avoid cutting out the roots when I could:



There is a cold front moving in and possible snow this evening, so I am delaying putting in the strawberries and other plants, but I will try to get a pic up of the finished flower beds when possible. Thanks for viewing!

2 comments:

  1. Mike - What happened to the running blog dude? i haven't heard anything from you since you moved to charleston. looks like you're getting settled in though.

    charleston is a great place to run. you doing the cooper river bridge run this year? i think i have a conflict, but it's a favorite 10k of the city. you HAVE to run it.

    I'm moving to Raleigh, NC now and I'm pissed that I have to leave my garden behind. Good luck with the strawberries, mine grew great last year.

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  2. Hi John - I am registered for the cooper river run and am very excited about it - love that great new bridge should be very scenic. Sounds like you've been keeping busy - isn't there a marathon on deck for oh ten?

    I have not decided whether to start blogging my charleston running but I'm still getting out there - just did a run over the bridge to the tip of the battery two days ago. It hurt. I kind of slacked off over the winter.

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