Planting Day!
Finally planting day arrived on May 24th. I know, I'm way behind on updating the blog.
Still, STILL, on PLANTING DAY, with new baby plants spread out ready to go in the ground, my neighbors were asking "what happened to your lawn?" All hail the mighty lawn grass!
So, with the "not mulch mulch" layer down the day before (see the previous blog post for prep info), I woke up extra early to beat the heat and got everything laid out. That took longer than expected, but I was planting by 9am. The planting was not completely random; some plants were pooled together in small groups, then a few put out as individuals. This is how most plants occur in nature, so the native lawn will feel a bit more realistic. The taller plants were focused in the back, and everything along the sidewalk were plants that would not get tall or floppy. I'll just have to make sure the strawberries don't crawl out too far. The Lobelia was delayed until the end of June, so I put in stones as placeholders for those until they arrived. They require a bit more water than the rest, so I placed them in the low spots in the soil where they're more likely to collect a bit more rainwater. The Phlox was also delayed just a bit, so pink flags went in for those.
Once all of the live plants were in, I spread out the Columbine and Poverty oats seeds mixed with some sawdust. All that was left after that was to water everything in.
Here's the whole list.... I ended up just planting the whole tray of some of them, even though I did not originally intend to:
As for the seed quantities, I used the whole packets of both: 50 Columbine and 7000 Poverty oats. Yes, 7000. The original quantity I intended to use was 650. But I opened it up and they looked so tiny, I just dumped them all into the sawdust. Might have been a mistake. I thought I could always thin them out. Guess what? Not a single one germinated. Not. One.
345 plants installed in 4 hours and 20 minutes. That's 80 plants per hour. I expected to do about 60 per hour in this poor soil. I'm quite impressed with myself, I must say.
So here we are in mid-July. Everything is doing quite well except the Lobelia, which is struggling a bit in the heat and drought. The violets, which were transplanted from my garden, are also struggling, but I expect them to come right back. I've had just a few weeds but more lawn grass poking back through than I would like. I've decided to put the sprinkler on a timer and water about every 3 days early in the morning due to the extreme heat and drought, especially since I'll be on vacation for a while and won't be able to keep a close eye on it.
We did have a few heavy downpours early on. Actually, the day after I planted, we had a seriously heavy one, and all the compost and biochar stayed right in place and did not wash away at all. The grass stubble worked! Success!
Interested in the tools I used for planting? I did not use a drill and auger attachment as you might expect. To be effective you really need a concrete mixer rather than a household drill in the heavy clay soil and tree roots I would be dealing with, and I really don't need to invest in one of those for the few planting projects I do. Instead, I use a Pro-plugger, Hori-Hori knife, and Tub Trug. At 80 plants in the ground per hour for just one person, I'd say that's pretty effective. You can find links to each of those tools on my new PRODUCTS page.
What comes next? I'll just keep an eye on everything. I'll continue to monitor weeds like I would any other new garden planting and keep watering during drought and heat. If none of the Poverty oats ever germinate, I'll try something else next year - maybe I'll try starting a few plug trays over the winter. I'm also interested in trying to transplant some native Nimble Will grass from my lawn into the native lawn. Maybe I'll do that in the fall.
If you're local to South Central PA and want to come check out the native lawn, message me and I'll be happy to arrange something! That's the whole reason I'm doing this after all. Follow along on my social media for continuing updates on how the lawn is doing. I keep updates and many more photos in my saved story highlights on my Instagram page (quick link at the bottom of this page).
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