Curb Appeal

So up until recently I've been working mostly on my backyard and not very much on the front.  But it's the front yard that everyone else actually sees, so I decided to jump on adding some curb appeal during my week off.  One area that has always bugged me is the lawn to the West of my driveway as it is 90% weeds and 10% dead grass (not attractive) so I decided to take at least one step towards fixing that.  My mailbox area was of the same story, so I figured I could just dig it all up and replace the weeds with a flower garden to make it look a lot better, and I wouldn't have to mow that pointless little area (BONUS!).

I wish I had taken a before picture, but just know that it looked exactly like the area directly above it in most of these pictures, plus a baby tree growing in front of my mailbox.

At first I dug up all the weeds and just tilled the Earth and was planning on leaving it like that for the sake of simplicity.

Wasn't going to cut it

But after sleeping on it I realized that just a few more steps would mean a lot less headaches (weeds) in the future, so it was worth it to put in the extra effort.  I dug up several inches of dirt and roots from my neighbor's tree.  Here you can see the edger I put into the ground to prevent grass and weeds from creeping into the new flower bed.

The next step is a little weird and caught the attention of my mailwoman, but I've tried it in my backyard and it works very well.  Newspapers when wet and covered work just as well as landscaping fabric at blocking existing weeds or grass from growing out of any leftover roots.  AND newspapers will eventually decompose into the earth.  This won't prevent me from ever having weeds, but if I left any grassroots or weed roots in there they won't be growing back.

After that I got some free compost from the landfill which you can read more about here.  I filled my entire truck and it was barely enough!

After throwing that in and making sure the middle was slightly raised from the edges to ensure proper drainage, I covered it with mulch before deciding what to plant in it.

Even without plants the curb appeal is already much better!!

Free Compost in Lincoln

Now this was my greatest discovery of the past week, and I owe it to the Crowder family for telling me about it.  You can get free compost (and great compost at that) from the city landfill at the 48th Street Transfer Station.  Now I wasn't able to confirm this online on the landfill's website, but it exists!  It's sort of annoying that they don't mention it online because it's a great service.  So that's why I'm mentioning it now to hopefully help some other curious person who doesn't want to pay for dirt.  When I went there they gave me a brochure with some information so I'll let their words explain it for you:

Just bring a shovel and get to work!

It's that time of year!

As my neighborhood Ace puts together their Garden Center I just keep getting more and more excited to spend some time outside, Spring is HERE!

... I hope...
I mean, we've had mother nature fool us a couple times already so I'm proceeding with some caution here...

But warm weather does mean I can get back out into the backyard and continue to improve on my flower bed and create a warm, inviting back patio where I will likely spend most of my summer grilling and relaxing away.  Unless of course it's like last summer and it's over 100 degrees everyday, in which case I'll likely be inside in the air conditioning...

And now for an update!

Last summer I neglected my backyard due to the drought and the heat, and I developed quite the crab grass problem in the center of my flower bed.  Not really knowing how to get rid of it, I dug up all of it including a lot of dirt (I didn't want to leave any roots in there) and replaced it with some new top soil just the other day.

There'a a beautiful view of the crab grass from last year

And there lies my problem. No mulch invites crab grass

It has taken me two whole summers to realize that I need to have my entire flower bed well covered with mulch throughout the entire season to prevent weeds, so that is something I hope to keep on top of this year.  I also tried something new when I replaced the soil.  I put down several layers of newspaper in the area that I had dug up as I have heard it prevents weeds from growing by acting a lot like landscape fabric.  I then covered it with just about an inch of soil and then with mulch, so I'll be reporting on whether or not that works.

Also, the crab grass sort of killed out a lot of the plants I had in the center of my flower bed so I'll need to add quite a few more plants this summer.  Another thing I've read is that if there is no room for weeds, there won't be any weeds... So I plan on packing the flowers in quite a bit this spring.

Stay tuned!