Okay, so now that winter appears to be over, it's time for a project awesome yard update.
My lawn was looking pretty good (thank you fall fertilizer!) until I started getting some yellow spots. Yellow spots? Now, this is different from dormant grass which kinda looks dead (it's not, it's sleeping shhhh). So I rechecked out all my lawn care books from the library I read last year and decided I had iron chlorosis, or my lawn was anemic. I went with Ironite and spread it at the recommended rate and didn't notice much of anything. So I decided to boost it a little with a shot of household ammonia. Still nothing, but the lawn looked a little perkier. Finally, after 2 weeks, the lawn is looking green again. Next time, because I'm impatient, I'm going to try a liquid iron.
In other learning experiences, the 2 year old pea seeds never sprouted, so today I planted some 2009 ones. I noticed some carrot seedlings and spinach seedlings, but my dirt had crusted over so they were having a hard time peaking out. I raked a little and added some peat moss and I'm hoping that will help. Oh, and I had to reseed my lettuce too.
A word about peat moss. It's a non renewable resource so it should be used in very small amounts, if at all. Unfortunately, my dirt clay is so bad that adding compost isn't enough. So I decided to limit myself to one bag of PM for my whole yard. I'll let you know if that works out. So far so good.
I pruned my plum tree. This is time to prune your fruit trees and if they've never been pruned (like mine) you have to really cut them back hard. I forgot to fertilize it though and I need to get on that this week.
I'm trying to get lawn aerated in the next two weeks because I need to fertilize it and that works better after aeration. Again, the heavy clay soil makes it tough for roots to spread.
In my next post I'll let you know about my flower bed! Remember all those bulbs I planted?Labels: gardening