Backyard Landscaping - Raised Garden Bed

My wife is committing to growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

At least that's how I see it after completing a sixteen by four by two foot raised garden bed. The project included borrowing a chop-saw from a friend, a slightly treacherous and probably ill-advised trip home from the hardware store with sixteen-foot pieces of lumber strapped to the roof of the car, and much more painting than I would have anticipated.

Oh, and digging in the dirt. Lots of digging.

So here is the box, assembled and upside down. The black boarder around the bottom is my attempt at keeping the Bermuda grass from growing up through the bottom of the box, just like I did with the basketball court removal. As before, we'll see if it does any good.

After a bit of digging, the grass was out and I began the process of digging out the holes for the feet. What I hadn't discovered yet is that there is a sprinkler pipe up near the foot of the stairs that is going to cause a bit of trouble. I had to shift the bed away from the patio concrete enough to clear that pipe.

With my wife's help, we managed to flip it over easily enough. And then I began the level process, digging around the footings, measuring, propping up and pressing down until it was more or less level. You can see a little dab of the white PVC pipe that made this just a bit more tricky.

The last step was moving all the dirt from the patio to the bed and kind of leveling it out. As you can see, the bed is only about a third full so before we plant in the spring we are going to need to get some more.

Backyard Landscaping - Grass Almost There

Looking pretty good, eh?  Looking at the last photo from about six weeks ago, its starting to look like a real lawn; I even mowed for the first time this morning. Even without zooming in, you can see some bare spots and I re-seeded two weeks ago to try to fill those in. When I look closely, I can seem some of those seeds have sprouted but not near as many as I had hoped. I'll probably have to seed and fertilize again in the spring. At least we won't have a mud pit for the summer.

And there's more to my life than this lawn, I promise. Hopefully some of that will show up here soon.

Backyard Landscaping - Growing Grass Still

I don't know what to say other than this blog, as of late, is literally as exciting as watching grass grow.

And it will continue to be that way as it is clear from the photo above that I will need to add some seed in the coming weeks. The grass I planted doesn't grow super well in the heat and its just now cooling off from the summer. I'm hoping the second seeding will fill things in well enough that we can avoid mud for the winter.

Backyard Landscaping - Growing Grass

I know, I know. So many of you have been asking, "Whatever happened to that grass you planted?"
Here's a not-very-good picture taken after the sun had gone down this evening of this little guys getting going. I have no idea why they are popping up in such a patchy manner; I might have to re-seed in the fall before the water is turned off.

Backyard Landscaping - Dirt In and Grass Planted

While I was out of town this past week, my sister and her husband came to help visit and assist my wife with all the running of the house and caring for our son. And while they were at it, they moved the rest of the dirt in. Last night I planted the grass and tonight, when our irrigation water returned, I started watering. Let's hope our recently spotty irrigation water holds up for a week or two so the seed can germinate.

The lighter spot in the lower left is not covered by the sprinkler head very well. Though they claim to spread the water uniformly, that is clearly not the case.  I'll be able to cover it decently with water from another zone.

Backyard Landscaping - Smoothing the Fill Dirt

The dirt is definitely smoother but this photo is deceiving. There's still much more to move in and a lot of smoothing still to go.

Backyard Landscaping - Moving the Fill Dirt

Starting to move the pile of dirt in the drive to hole in the backyard.  Here's how the pile looked as left by the dump trucks. The dirt on the right is fill dirt and the that on the left is nutrient-rich topsoil.

I did a little work on Thursday but the majority of the action was yesterday with the help of my wonderful friend SamHam.

Here's how those piles looked after few hours of labor:

And the backyard:

I count roughly fifty wheelbarrow trips to get to this point but its a little tricky to tell because, as I was using the wheelbarrow, SamHam was carrying five gallon buckets of dirt and filling in some of the gaps I was leaving.  You know, just carrying big buckets of dirt like he did this everyday.

We made a good dent in the pile and I'm sure we'll have more to move. The next step will be smoothing out those piles and compacting them so I can get a good idea how much more of the lighter-colored fill dirt needs to be moved before we start moving in the darker-colored topsoil and plant the grass.

Backyard Landscaping - Bermuda Grass Barrier Installed

Finished last night:

Bermuda grass, the type of grass that pretty much covers our back yard because it does so well in the hot and dry climate we have here, had begun to chip away at the edges of our basketball court before this renovation. The asphalt was thin enough and the gras strong enough that it was actually growing underneath and then breaking through and apart the asphalt.

To help prevent that, I've installed a five-inch plastic barrier around the edge of what we retained of the court. I don't know how effective it will be but it was inexpensive and didn't take much labor to put into place. What you see above is my use of bricks to hold it flush to the asphalt; I'm hoping the sun will help relax the plastic from its rolled-up state into something straighter and I'll be using some tar-ish roofing adhesive/sealant along the top edge to help to stick to the asphalt.

At the two corners I've installed two notched PVC pipes to protect both the asphalt and help provide a stronger connection point for the barrier. Again, the roofing adhesive will be applied liberally to help secure the entire thing.

Again, I don't have high expectations but I wanted to try something to keep the Bermuda at bay.

Backyard Landscaping - Temporary Sprinkler System Install Complete-ish

Two trips to the home improvement store later, the temporary sprinkler system is in place.

Four heads at the corner of the court. The front edge of the asphalt has a plastic barrier I'm going to try using to keep the grass from being able to grow under the court and break it up, as it was doing at the edges of the original court. I'm skeptical of how effective it will be but I figure its worth a little extra cost and effort.

Backyard Landscaping - Beginning Sprinkler System Install

Completed last night and photographed this morning:

The trench on the left side is to support two new sprinkler heads placed at the corners of the court. There will be a parallel trench and sprinklers on the other side as well. The water for both of these will come from an existing line with three heads running along the back fence. Eventually there won't be any grass back there thus my choice to repurpose the line.

Backyard Landscaping - Gravel Removal Complete

I finished this up a few days ago after the sun had gone down and thus had to wait to get the picture.

Next up, hack in a few extra sprinkler heads to kind of get some water in the now removed court. This is going to be temporary as I'm planning to redo the sprinkler system as a whole but that won't be for a while.

Backyard Landscaping - Gravel Removal

Progress from last nights efforts. You can take pictures like this at 9pm in the evening when you live up north. Also, you can stay up later to work as well. I guess that's a bit of a two-edged sword.

Maybe another hour or two and I'll have it all out.

Backyard Landscaping - Basketball Court Asphalt Removal

When we purchased this house, the backyard was mostly a basketball court. Wanting to have more than asphalt to enjoy in the summer, we have been planning on how to improve things. A few weeks ago, that process began.

First, here's a very mediocre picture of what we were starting with.

I was getting some help with the asphalt (and gravel) removal and wanted to estimate how long I thought the job would take so I marked off a small fraction of the court and timed how long it took me to get it done. Verdict, 24 man-hours of labor to removal the full 30' x 40' court.

The help came and over the course of two evenings we got all the asphalt up; they weren't interested in sticking around for the gravel so that's what I've been working on infrequently over the past week or two.

We decided to keep a key-sized piece of the asphalt along with the fancy, very sturdy, and expensive basketball hoop. As I've been removing the several inches gravel that was laid beneath the asphalt I've been piling it in the key for use later in the project. The area on the left that is mostly brown has had the gravel removed (more or less); the area on the right that is gray has yet to be addressed.  I'm guessing is will be another two hours to get it done.

Stay tuned for further pictures of the yard as the project slowly evolves.