Garden Rehab

After our first attempt to seed the lawn with microclover were less than successful, I decided to switch to standard Dutch White Clover seed. The OSC website states , it is "robust, adaptive, drought resistant and somewhat shade tolerant", so it should have no trouble with the clay in our yard. Dutch White Clover seed is also significantly less expensive than microclover seed. For comparison, Dutch White Clover is $11.00/500 grams which works out to $0.55/25grams. Microclover is $8.95/25 g, about 16 times more.  I also decided to add some Sweet Alyssum to the lawn after reading about Fleur de Lawn , an environmentally friendly flowering lawn mix developed with Oregon State University. Along with a number of other species, they included Sweet Alyssum in their mix. To jump start things, I planted 32 small Alyssum plants along the walkway where the clover was having trouble getting started. July 1, 2017 - Dutch White Clover and Sweet Alyssum. The clover see...

I admit that I bought into the marketing for microclover . It seemed like polite, well-mannered clover.  At first, everything seemed fine. The clover came up, it was adorable. May 30, 2017 - clover sprouts May 30, 2017 - clover shoots Being cute and well behaved will only get you so far in the real world though. After several weeks, and 2 rounds of seeding, the clover lawn was looking sparse and increasingly full of weeds. June 20, 2017 June 20, 2017 In fairness to microclover, another problem was that we were not sure of the seeding rate. The OSC seeding package states that the seeding rate is 25 g/ 52 m2. We spread two packages and this should have been enough for the size of our yard. However, this seeding rate is likely for over-seeding a lawn (mixing clover in with existing grass) rather than starting a clover lawn from scratch. West Coast Seeds' s eeding calculator for microclover  provides a significantly higher seeding rate of 50g for ...

On day 5 of sod removal, we took a long look at our growing pile of sod and realized we had a problem. It was big. It was heavy. The City of Toronto would not take it away for us. (The City's  yard waste collection program  does not accept sod). This is an earlier sod pile... it grew. We decided to try composting the sod over the summer which will (hopefully) produce some really nice soil that we can use in the garden next year. The soil in our garden has a lot of clay, so the organic matter from the grass should improve the soil quality. We used cinder blocks and wood planks we already had to create a sod "corral". Sod corral. We've also planted squash in the compost pile. Growing up in Saskatchewan, one of our neighbours grew enormous pumpkins for Hallowe'en every year in his compost pile. The vines cover up the pile and the roots help to break down the compost.  By the end of June, after losing some of their cohort to squirrels a...

We planned this day for weeks, getting ready to replace our lawn with clover and bring native plant species into our garden. On April 14, 2017 - the first really warm day of spring - we took the plunge. We started with a patchy weed-filled grass lawn and a lonely tree. Zsa Zsa provided careful supervision of the project to ensure it met the highest standards. Morning of April 14, 2017 Our first task was to move the tree from its awkward location slightly off-centre (just enough off-centre to REALLY bug Mark) to the corner of the garden. The new location will allow us to create a more cohesive garden design.  Unexpectedly long roots. Proud of our accomplishments. And here is the tree in its new home, along with the beginnings of our cedar mulch path ... Two and half months later, the tree has settled in and seems to have come through the move with no problems. July 1 - healthy tree, post-move.