Showing posts with label lawn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lawn. Show all posts

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Grass Clipping Mulch. 6.21.14

Creative Grass Mowing.  6.21.14
 Yesterday I mowed around the raised beds, and other areas of the second acre.  Most people in this area have tightly trimmed, golf course - like yards.  Some are more like pastures.  This area is on a 30 foot wide  easement that we anticipate will be paved soon, by a neighbor with attitude.  We don't know how much of the 30 feet will be paved, or when.  Meanwhile it's grass, organic, no chemicals added.  As a result, used for mulch, the clippings are coarse and dry to a nice straw-like consistency. dont mat down too much or turn sour.  The golf course-like lawns in the neighborhood get fertilizer, water, chemicals, the grass is green and lush, then they collect clippings and burn them.  The smoke is nasty.  Seems insane.

I cut "crop circles" in an attempt to be whimsical.  There is a lot of clover in the grass, now, for nitrogen and bees.

Peppers in raised bed with grass clipping mulch.  6.21.14
I had newspaper and food package cardboard mulch for the squashes, just compost for the peppers.  Now that is covered with an approx 4 inch thick layer of grass clipping mulch.  Will keep them weed free and not as dry for summer.  Like any organic mulch, they will break down to add orgsnic content and life to the soil.

Potato "well" with grass clipping mulch.  6.21.14

The potato planters also got a thick layer of grass clipping.  About 6 inckes thick.  That is on top of a few inches of aged maple leaf mulch.

Mulch also went into some flower borders and around shrubs.  I view cutting the grass more as a harvest of quality organic mulch, than as grooming.

Sunchokes.  6.21.14
 The sunchokes already had a generous mulch of weeds, pulled from raised beds.  I topped that with grass clipping for a cleaner appearance and better weed control.

We recovered these sunchokes from Ning's meadow.  He planted them there last year when I was in surgery.  They didn't do so well there.  I found 3 of the plants.  We ate chokes from one, and I moved the others to this location.  With some added organic nitrogen, and lots of mulch, they are flourishing.  The shorter plant is shorter due to local herbivores.  The taller had a screen.  The herbivores seem to ignore them now.  Although they like to surprise me.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Clover

Clovers are regarded as forages or lawn weeds. When I was a boy, when the earth was green and great mastodons lumbered across the Illinois plains, lawns in my neighborhood and town were mixtures of grass and clover, with occasional dandelions and other weeds. Then came herbicides and fertilizers, and most lawns were converted to monocultures of grass. All of the images below are via wikimedia commons, searching on "clover" and "clover bee".

All clovers are nitrogen fixing, when working with their Rhizobium bacterial friends.  Might be a good idea to buy inoculated seeds, or buy inoculum.   Depends on who you are reading.

Dutch white clover (Trifolium repens) is considered good for lawns.  Dutch White clover is compact, keeping to a smaller size than most other clovers.  It does not require watering, stays green longer than grasses do, and does well in poor soil.  Dutch white clover improves the soil.  This clover is a perennial legume.  Dutch white clover is the type that grew on that ancient Illinois lawn of my boyhood years.  It turns out that before herbicides and fertilizers, clover was included in high quality lawn seed.
The prompting issue for me, now, is to have lots of nectar production for honey bees.  Of course.  White clover is known as very bee friendly and produces a clear, excellent honey.   Even without wanting to make honey, and even without beekeeping, however, the role of clover in soil conditioning and possibly attracting beneficial insects, and nurturing neighborhood bees, makes it a good addition to the lawn.

Part of the "rebranding" of white clover as a weed, was that bees were so attracted to it.  The thought was that, to reduce risk for bee stings, we should eradicate clover in our lawns, keeping them toxic, environmentally wasteful and damaging, and unhealthy, but pure and pretty to some eyes.  Multiple websites, especially grass seed companies, lawn care companies, and purveyors of fine chemical toxins, continue to promulgate the idea that clover is bad.
Red clover (Trifolium pratense)   is regarded as marginal for honey bees, because the flower shape doesn't allow for good nectar retrieval by honey bees.  Even so, they are beautiful to look at, and other beneficial insects can be attracted.  Red clover is a short lived perennial, lasting 2 or 3 years.  .
Red clover with bee.  Apparently, honey bees may not get much nectar, but they can collect and use pollen.  I don't know if some honey bees are better adapted than others, for red clover.  Other types of bees might benefit.  There are other choices, so it might be best to aim for those.
Ferdinand bee from the story of  Ferdinand the Bull.  My favorite book.  And this image is inked onto my right calf.  Looks like this bee is on a red clover.

Crimson clover, Trifolium incarnatum.  "Incarnatum" refers to "blood red".  Not the same as red clover.  A good producer of nectar for honey bees, and the bloom time is after fruits, and before white clover, which makes for a more extended nectar season.  Trifolium incarnatum is an annual herb, and does not regenerate when cut.  So I imagine it would make a good green manure for raised beds, as well.

If I plant in Spring, I may not get much, if any, bloom and nectar, for the white and crimson clovers.  All in good time. The first year of beekeeping is about learning, and improving my environment for them in future years, and seeing what works, and what doesn't work.

White there are already occasional clover plants in the orchard and yard, they are rare.  Probably due to nuking with "weed and feed".  I want a more productive ground cover.  Today I went around the little orchard area and lawns, with a garden rake and packets of white clover seeds.  They can be obtained on Amazon and other places.  I raked the mole hills smooth, spreading the soft  soil around.  Then I sprinkled Dutch White Clover seeds thinly on the prepared patches of soil, and raked a little more.  The first frost is expected in one or two weeks.  I don't know if these first seeds will survive and grow,  If they don't, I'll replant in Spring. By then there will be more molehills, too.   I will wait until other plants are growing, and if no clover germination then, I'll replant.  I feel like I've made another step in the process of creating a more natural and useful area for honey and other bees, beneficial insects, the soil, and the plants and trees.


Sunday, June 14, 2009

Fresh Fruit! Garden Log for mid June.

Ning's Cherries are almost ripe. This is the oldest tree, about 7 years old. The 4-year-old trees just have scattered cherries.

The strawberries have been producing for a week. This is a typical day's haul. Plenty for our needs. The most productive have been the ones around the rowse bed and around the tomato patch. Fertilized only with compost.




Other Garden Notes.

1. Figs. I've pinched out the terminal buds on all of the fig trees. Those that were pinched 2 weeks ago have responded with new fig embryos at each leaf node. I've removed about 1/4 of them, in hopes of earlier & better figs. Brebas not yet ripe but growing larger day by day.

2. Peaches. Most are about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. I thinned about 1/4 of the remaining peaches, to avoid over bearing, and inprove chances of earlier and better fruit.

3. Tomatoes. Most are blooming. All have been tied to their posts, and side branches removed for cordon training.

4. Peppers. Lots of holes in the leaves. What's eating them? But they are blooming.

5. Rhubarb. Over the hill. I made a wonderful strawberry-rhubarb sauce, similar to the video below but with 1/2 strawberries. Used frozen rhubarb and frozen strawberries still left over from last year. Great on pancakes! Yum!

6. Roses. First bloom is over the hill. They've been beautiful and prolific.

7. Asparagus starts. All are about 6 inches tall. Will I EVER get them established? Still trying.

8. Lawn. Still mowing using the mechanical mower. More clover this year. Not a problem.

9. Hazelnut trees. Still alive! Also all of the new fruit trees, including sour cherry, 2 Japanese plums, and multigraft Asian Pear.

10. Fallgold raspberry, now bearing too. These are SO good!

Lots of weeds going to the chickens. No eggs in a month from the 2 older hens. The 2 younger ones are not laying yet either. Come on girls.... earn your keep!

Rhubarb Sauce. Since my rhubarb was limited, I replaced about 1/2 with strawberries. I used tapioca instead of starch. Otherwise about the same. SO GOOD!

Monday, August 11, 2008

"Greening" the lawn


I can come up with an opinion about anything...

"Traditional" lawn maintenance burns as much gasoline in an hour as driving 100 miles, results in as much petrochemical spillage as the Exxon Valdez, causes air pollution with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and ozone, wastes water, damages waterways.


In keeping with living 'greener'-
1. We let the lawn go brown for the summer. OK, some of that was just neglect, but the front lawn was intentional. It greens up nicely when the rains start in the fall. Fortunately, we dont live in Sacramento, where citizens can be harrassed into watering their lawns during an official drought!
2. We let the lawn go 'diverse'. This was also passive, mostly. Anything that stays small (clover, small-leaf ground covers, yarrow, alyssum, violets) can stay. I do pull dandelions by hand. Those are fed either to the compost pile or to the chickens.

3. We bought this new high-tech no-emissions bio-powered mower. It uses only renewable bio-energy, does not result in toxic spills and smog (unless certain legumes have been used in the bioprocess), and provides useful calorie-burning cardio-exercise for the overweight operator. It's quiet as well as healthy to use.

Obviously, with a brown lawn, the new mower isn't needed now. I'll see how it works this fall, before giving up the more traditional rotary (but electric) mower.

Proudly called "American". Of course, the package states "made in China". sigh....

(Image at the top is copyright-expired from wikipedia commons)