The Word of the Week is Fertilizer

Welcome to Week 3 of the Yard Transformation Challenge, hosted by Nat at Simple Family Crazy Life

Week 1|Week 2|Week 3|Week4|Week 5 |Week 6

So happy that you came back to see where we are at the half way point of this challenge.

Lawn

I’m really not an expert on lawns. And I have to admit that Greg is really taking the lead on this. I have started to do some reading and research so hopefully by next year, I will actually be able to provide some information based on experience! In the mean time , I checked in with my Dad, who has a pretty flawless lawn, and he told me that he has always used Scotts Turf Builder so we did too! As above we used the  Turf Builder, Scott’s Lawn Response 9-1-1, which is a mix of fertilizer, soil enhancers and grass seed. And also an additional bag of grass seed. And speaking of family. My Grandma used to have the MOST beautiful gardens. I always remember being a little girl at her house, and picking snapdragons to use for finger puppets. And I remember her telling me years ago the the reason her garden was so fabulous was because she used Miracle-Gro  Did you know that this fertilizer has been around for over 150 YEARS!! I just bought this one, so let’s see how my flowers do?

Fence & Pressure Washing

So after quite a bit of debate, and honestly even more paint samples. I ended up going with the Cappuccino semi transparent stain by Behr. It’s a bit more solid than I wanted. But I think that using transparent on a fence that is not new, shows a LOT of imperfections. I bought one gallon (that’s 3.78 litres for those of us in Canada 🙂 And that covered 3 panels and 2 planter boxes, I have TWENTY-TWO MORE panels to go, and that is not including the back side. So, I bought a 5 gallon bucket of stain. That was a bit more expensive than I thought it would be at about $275 Canadian dollars. Well, there’s no going back now! Here is what it looks like with some of the staining done.

Roses

The roses are doing their thing for spring. I have added in rose fertilizer I’m thinking about pruning down a few of the bushes that I left tall, or all of the blooms are going to end up way above my head! I did leave one of my climbers really high because it’s forming a natural canopy and will be really beautiful when it’s in bloom.

Trees

I went with the coiled plastic edging for these little trees. It already looks better. To “install” it, I put it in the intended spot, and then used a turf edger to cut into the dirt around it. Then I used a rubber mallet to pound it into the area where I had cut into the soil. Once it was in place I pulled up any grass that was inside the border – done!

Strawberry Experiment

We have this little free standing planter box in our yard, that had nothing in it. One of the ONLY areas without flowers. I assume that the previous owners probably used it for herbs or some sort of veggies, but it’s not very big. I decided to fill it with strawberries. And I decided to do a little experiment, and bought 6 different varieties, to see which ones grow the best, and also which ones we like the best.  Here is what it looked like before I planted them (this piece isn’t stained yet either)

I’ll give you an update on this area over the next few weeks. Here are the variaties that I planted:

• Honeoye
• Kent
• Seascape
• Fort Laramie
• Berries galore white
• All Star

And here is the start of our strawberry patch! Angus (the cat) LOVES strawberries, so I may end up having to drag him out of here, once he figures out how to get up here.

Colour

There are a lot of perennials in the gardens, but I still want to add in some annuals for that quick pop of colour.  I made my first trip to the garden centre this week, it was still too soon for some of the flowers that I wanted but and I still left with a couple of calla lillies, and another clematis, there are already a few along this fence as you can see below. I bought one called Pink Champagne I also scoped out a really cool garden ornament that I’m thinking about going back to buy. If I get it, you will see it next week!

I also bought a couple of coleus in a beautiful shade of red. I was going to use them in planters in the front yard, but they look so nice tucked into the garden, that I think I will have to go back and buy more for the front yard.

Furniture

We have been looking at a lot of furniture. There are so many beautiful sets to choose from, it’s hard to make a decision.  My one concern is that the patio is 12 x 30, which isn’t really that deep, so I don’t want to jam so much furniture on it that you can’t get around it. But having said that, I would really love to have 2 separate seating areas. At this point I’m still looking around to find something that speaks to me!

That wraps it up for this week, please come back next week!

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