Front Yard Transformation Challenge – Week 4

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Welcome back to the week 4 of the front yard transformation challenge! There were many surprises this week and not too much done because of those surprises.

But the yard transformation is slowly coming along 🙂

One of the not so pleasant surprises we woke up to on Monday, the Easter holiday, was snow. Yes… here in the Lower Mainland, one of the warmest areas in Canada (in winter) we had snow…

Someone may find it very pretty. But to me, it was kind of too much. Mother Nature was just a day late for the April Fools Day, and we did not find her joke funny.

Nope.

No more snow is allowed here until Christmas!

I know I am too naive to think Mother Nature will listen to me 🙂

Another surprise was an uninvited visitor who ate our tulips and walked over the garden beds 🙁

Nature is everywhere 🙂

We don’t mind sharing, but those tulips were too beautiful to eat!

Anyway, we had placed an order for the garden soil delivery from one of the local landscaping company, and they called to let us know that it will be delivered on Tuesday.

Happy dancing!

Garden soil was delivered in a timely manner. The truck driver had professionally dropped it off right onto the prepared plastic cover (for the driveway asphalt protection).

The wall behind is pretty embarrassing… Yup, I know… it needs a good pressure washing!

Best Fill for the Raised Garden Beds

There are many ways to fill the garden beds to block the grass and weeds from growing in them.

Many gardeners use cardboard or newspapers to as a base layer. We do that as well usually.

However, this time we decided that we could use the leaves from a compost bin as we had too many. We placed a thick layer of the leaves and covered it with a content of another compost bin which was mainly the kitchen scraps.

Can you see the red wigglers living in it?

 

We currently have a large worm bin in the greenhouse but are thinking about spreading them around the garden and just leaving enough in a smaller bin.

If we did that, it would allow us to remove the worms bin from the greenhouse and add another raised garden bed there 😉 Yes, we could use another raised bed there 🙂

Anyway, after the leaves and compost, we spread the garden soil in the beds. As it was raining almost for this whole time, the soil had settled and we needed to add more this weekend.

It looks so much better already!

My plan was to lay out the garden beds as a flower. But Alan said it looked like a sun.

A flower, or the sun, it looks great to me!

What do you think?

Pathways between the beds

Initially, we thought we would cover the pathways between the garden beds with the woodchips ordered earlier. But we noticed the microclover and creeping thyme growing there.

We spread the seeds last fall and I was not sure they would take off.

But they did and I don’t want to cover them with the woodchips now 🙂

I am already envisioning the creeping thyme blooming in summer! And I am hoping to have a pink-purple lawn!

Ahhhh… I can’t wait!

Transformation Challenge – Tasks to-do

There are just a few things left on our tasks’ list for this project:

• Complete the south side slope with a stone wall and build a flower bed there;
• Add more soil to the areas on both sides of the entrance to the house;
• Amend soil in the flower bed on the west slope;
• Decorate!

Unfortunately, the weather gods are not sending us an optimistic forecast. It looks like we are still getting more rain and cold nights…

This is not helping to get the plants grow… And it looks like we won’t be able to showcase you the complete transformation in the full bloom.

But we will make sure to provide an update in summer!

Are you curious to see what it will look like then?

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The challenge will launch on April 23 and will be running for 6 weeks. This will hopefully be enough time to complete your project taking into consideration the weather invocation. As you know, it is still spring and it may be unpredictable…

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See you next week 🙂

Nat

Challenge Announcement | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3