It’s been 5 weeks since the start of Yardmageddon 2013.

Yardmageddon is our annual effort at DIY landscaping. We don’t know a damn thing about plants.

Yardmageddon Part 2 – Planting grass seeds

Our yard is pretty average

Some [retired, wealthy] people around us have made their yard their pride. Others have so much yard it’s difficult to see the house hiding inside it.

We have the misfortune of living among the former sort, who are keen to remind us of their disdain for our landscaping. (It’s not bad, really. They’re just jerks.)

Doing it ourselves

But anyway, in effort to improve our resale value (and getting jerks to STFU), we’ve been working on the “beautifying” landscaping more this year. Our first year here we removed hazardous shrubs, picked up fifty pounds of dog crap from the backyard, and weeded like it was going out of style. Our second year we removed hazardous trees and weeded again. Finally, in year 3, we are ready to beautify.

This is where well-heeled people obsessed with appearance would hire a landscaping designer and pay thousands of dollars for a yard that will cost thousands of dollars to maintain. I am neither of those things. And while I don’t know a lot about making yards pretty, I do know how to photograph pretty yards and then try to copy elements of them into my own yard. DIY landscaping at its finest, folks.

Here’s how things are growing.

Backyard shrubs:
The arborvitaes haven’t died. Yay! Small success there. We’ve been watering twice a week, deeply. Our arborvitae watering technique:

1) Point hose at base of arborvitae
2) Wait 8-10 minutes
3) Re-position hose at base of next arborvitae

4) Repeat twice a week, skip if it rains heavily.

These little accent shrubs I planted in the backyard are also thriving. They are named Stonecrop Sedumn Autumn Charm. The middle one has stayed small but its two siblings have grown larger. Dunno why.

Side:

This dude’s doing well, too, although he hasn’t changed much in terms of size. Since this side of the house is the sunniest, I expect him to do well over the long haul.

Grass:
Our grass seeds are starting to sprout and fill in, but it’s pretty slow going. We water at 8am and 8pm, about 10 minutes each session. The grass that found its way here naturally is doing super well. I hope it spreads to the bald areas. :P

Close up of the grasslings:

We’re about to enter the dry season (we’re on Seattle’s eastside) in which we’ll go a good 2-3 months without rainfall. Traditionally, this is when our yard turns yellow until the rain returns in September/October. We’ll water through the dry period (like we did last year to establish the sod) and hope that all these plants thrive with the combination of sunlight and regular watering.

Continuing in our theme of outdoor experimentation, this weekend we planted grass seed. The area where we planted was a mix of weeds, mulch, and some small patches of grass that naturally found its way into this area. The goal is to fill this area in with grass, which will hopefully be easier to maintain than the mulch is.

Step 1: Pull out all the weeds

Step 2: Aggressively(!) rake the mulch so it’s not just a flat surface of packed down wood chips and dirt

Step 3: Empty a few bags of lawn soil over the area, rake it into the existing mulch/dirt mixture

Step 4: Spray grass seed all over the new soil/old soil mix

Step 5: Rake again to mix the grass seed into the new soil/old soil mix

Step 6: Water for ~10 minutes! (This day, and just about every day after until well-established)

Our afternoon, in photos:

These long strips of edging are just a massive pain in the ass. They’re hard to mow around, easy to trip on, they look like shit when they start breaking and popping out of the ground, they’re horrible to remove, and I have no idea how we’ll dispose of them so they’re piled up in the backyard.