Planning for 2018

Spring is taking it's sweet ol' time getting here this year.

It's still too cold to do anything outside - my thermometer reads -5C/23F right now - and the ground is still frozen solid.  The weather should start to turn soon, though - I have a feeling that I'll be out there by next week (hurray!)

Front walkway on March 13th

There's not much to do in the vegetable beds at this time of year since compost was added in the fall.  Today, I'll be raking the straw off the beds & placing plastic down on a few so that the spring plantings such as onions will have a toastier start.

Clear plastic on a couple of beds back in April 2015

2018 will be all about finishing what I started and getting to some tasks that have been on the “to do” list for a long time.  Keeping up with regular annual maintenance such as weeding and edging is also a priority.

I've been tweaking said "to-do" list and today, I thought I would talk about the plan for the backyard ornamental borders.

Looking towards the hilltop

There are 6 distinct ornamental beds in the backyard.  None are finished, per say, but all except one have been weeded, mulched, edged and existing shrubs/perennials have been aggressively pruned or removed altogether.

Progress being made on one of the beds last year

At this point, I'm aiming for a clean slate.  I don't want to start adding new plant material until I'm satisfied that troublesome weeds and/or invasives have been dealt with so this year I'll only be topping up mulch, edging and staying on top of weeding.  In terms of the existing plants, my focus will be on pruning shrubs and removing a couple of shrub honeysuckles that are a pain-in-the-butt.  I'll also be continuing my battle to eliminate the buckthorn & some kind of bamboo grass that's always leaning over and smacking us in the face when we walk down the path - seriously!

Thankfully not a spreading bamboo, but trying to dig it up resulted
in a few expletives (from my husband) and a broken shovel,
so we are going with the black plastic and continuous cutting back approach
in the hopes of starving it to death.

The one ornamental bed that is still untouched is right at the base of our hill - this is the year when it finally gets cleaned up.  This bed is not only overgrown and weedy but it’s also riddled with buckthorn.

The jungle bed, back in 2015.
It provides us with a good privacy screen but not much else

I'm planning to tackle this bed first, hopefully before anything starts growing, 'cause we all know how that goes - spring growth progresses at lightening speed once it starts.

Lastly, there is the area in front of our two sheds which has always been difficult to mow.  We're not the best when it comes to weed whackering, so by mid-summer it was inevitably a mess of overgrown grass, dead grass (from the continuous back and forth with the tractor) and weeds.  Last year we finally got around to sheet mulching this area.  The only thing left to do, which is on the schedule for this year, is install edging and top up the mulch/remove any weeds that poke through.

The before shot
This area was mulched late last year but I didn't get around to taking a photo
(you can tell that I'm about utility first and beautification second -
at some point, I'm sure I'll get around to "prettying-up" the sheds😀)

Did you catch how I slipped "install edging" into that last paragraph?  That's something I didn't think I would ever do.  In the ornamental borders, we do a cut edge using a half-moon edger, but for this area, we need a physical barrier.

Now, I’ve always hated plastic edging* and in fact removed a ton of it from various borders when we moved here.  In this particular case, however, it’s necessary as we need a sturdy edge that we can step on and drive over with the tractor, wheelbarrow and wagon when going back and forth from the shed.

*I felt a little guilty saying that I "hate" plastic edging, which I always have, since my attitude has changed, just a smidgen, recently.  No - really.  In my garden travels over the past couple of years, I must admit that I've seen several instances where it served its purpose (keeping mulch in and grass out) AND it was unobtrusive in that you could barely see it unless you were right next to the bed.  Of course, it also means less maintenance since you eliminate all that manual edging each year.  The caveat here is that it has to be the commercial grade stuff (i.e. which is 5-6" in depth and much sturdier) and - this is the biggie - installed correctly, which most edging is not.  Although I still doubt that I would use it in the ornamental borders unless maintenance became an issue (none of us are getting any younger, now, are we??), seeing it used correctly in these gardens was rather eye-opening.  Just sayin'.