Chronicles of a Noob Garden and Gardener

If you have a little time and are bored you can do a little reading on Buffalo grass as lawn turf. It's tough and is a good alternative lawn in some situations.

http://dyckarboretum.org/buffalograss-five-keys-successful-planting/

Ben E Lou said:

Yeah, we're thinking about getting a dog. The next-door neighbors have a cat, but she's practically never in our yard. Maybe the cheaper solution is to grow catnip to draw her over here???

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I did end up buying catnip seeds, for precisely this purpose.

Ben E Lou said:

I did end up buying catnip seeds, for precisely this purpose.

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Crush the plant every so often to release the scent that drives cats nuts.

I think that you will find what plants that you can keep up with cultivating and what you cannot. It all depends on how much time you want to spend babystitting some plants. You will discover what tasks become a chore, and what tasks gets your endorphins going.
I LOVE to mow!! Don't know Why...so I don't question it.

Ben E Lou said:

@majorcatfish Here’s where the bulk of the herbs will be located—the 8'x4' area from the bottom of the stairs to the downspout. We’ll plant some extra basil and put the mint container in the area on the other side of the downspout as well.

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Include oregano in your herb garden. It spreads like a weed, BUT it is easy to pull out, so it covers where the weeds might want to grow. I have to renew MY herb bed bc it has become pretty much an oregano bed...with some sage. You can transplant oregano in amongst your vegetables as a companion plant. I planted oregano ONCE, some 15-16 years ago. Basically work free plant.

Updates...

• All seeds have arrived in the mail or have been purchased locally, I think. I'll do an inventory soon to make sure.
• @ducks4you I did end up buying an "herb garden mix" that included oregano.
• I tilled the entire vegetable area (roughly 700 sq ft) in a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, and I'm glad I did. I don't recall if I mentioned it, but I covered that area with leaves as a winter mulch. Well, the leaves were quite a bit more matted/stuck together than I'd realized. (Many were not shredded, but whole leaves.) With that, combined with the mostly-but-not-fully-finished compost on top of it, I think some mixing may well have been in order. I got that all mixed up well and the tiller did a fine job of breaking up the leaves into smaller pieces in preparation for...
  
• ...Today, where I bought ~1500 European Night Crawlers from a local worm farm and put them all in the vegetable area. Per the suggestion of the worm farmer I dug six holes, spaced throughout the garden, where I buried kitchen scraps and put a concentration of worms in those--hoping for some breeding--and then spread the rest of them all over.
• No germination yet for the kale seeds. They've been a little cooler than ideal--in the 55 to 60 degree range. Here's hoping for this weekend.
• I know I keep saying it, but I'm still utterly stunned at the progress of the garlic.

Oh....worth noting: we've had an unusual stretch of above-freezing nights, which is what allowed me to get the worms now with confidence that they'll be fine. (They were actually nearly 100% below the surface in less than 2 minutes.) It hasn't been below freezing since 12/27, and 1/9 looks like our next chance for a freeze. I wonder if that is playing into the above-ground garlic growth.

Ben E Lou said:

Oh....worth noting: we've had an unusual stretch of above-freezing nights, which is what allowed me to get the worms now with confidence that they'll be fine. (They were actually nearly 100% below the surface in less than 2 minutes.) It hasn't been below freezing since 12/27, and 1/9 looks like our next chance for a freeze. I wonder if that is playing into the above-ground garlic growth.

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even up here in the northland we can have green garlic leaves under the snow. it isn't cold enough and insulated enough to keep them alive. so this is pretty much natural. the other point is that if the weather is very cold and there isn't enough snow cover it will kill the garlic leaves back to the ground, but it will start regrowing when the weather warms up.

if you really like garlic and onions i do recommend planting extra cloves deeper in your herb garden and you can then dig it as a green onion/green garlic in the late winter and through into early summer. yum.

worms will head for the level where the moisture is good and temperature is above freezing. they may not be super active in the winter, but they are there. in the hotter summer months you might find it useful to have some shaded and moist spots for them to hide from the heat/dry. i also bury organic matter down a few feet so some of them can hide out in there until the better temperatures and moisture return.

and as a p.s. beware of buying wild flower seed mixes or random packages of seeds to scatter around. it has been the source of some pretty nasty invasive weeds here that have cost a lot of extra work that didn't need to happen.

First germination! Tiny kale seedlings are starting to emerge in my mini greenhouse. A few pics:







The little space heater has been a surprising star. Even on nights that have gotten into the lower 20s, the greenhouse has remained in the 55 to 80° range all night long.

thinking about going fishing this weekend i know now where to get nightcrawlers for bait...

what type of kale did you plant ?