Despite the fact that our current raised panel project has been pretty time consuming, we’ve still had to make some time for the normal seasonal work. Just this past week we did some basic outdoor sprucing up. We’ve had to do the typical weeding of the flower beds and I reinstalled the drip irrigation controller. The healthy rains through April and May let me delay it’s re-installation up until now with what seems like minimal impact to the health of our shrubs. We also were able to find time to replace a dead grass plant.
Last year the we planted a healthy variegated grass to help hide the electric meter and the landscape lighting controller. I think we planted it around late August. By October it was dead and we asked our readers if they though it was dead or just dormant.
That’s it looking pretty dead. So, instead of ripping it out in October and replacing it, we decided to wait until the spring to see if it re-sprouted. Negative. I chopped it down with a weed whacker in late April and only got a couple blades to grow back.
To replace it, we went with something similar.
Hopefully this one will stick around a little longer! To help it survive, I added some healthy topsoil from a bag and I’ll also be giving it a drip irrigation nozzle soon to make sure it gets enough water. The drip system is nice. It’s really cheap to install, it doesn’t use much water and it keeps me from having to water these shrubs = me doing things I’d rather be doing.
There is some bad news to report though. The razzleberri plant hasn’t done so well lately. It bloomed pretty early this spring, but when I went to plant the replacement grass, I noticed it was looking pretty ragged.
It looks like it’s been getting too much sun and no SPF 50. It must be Irish or something. I have fond memories of this shrub in its heyday.
Oh well. If this doesn’t perk back up, we’ll be replacing it too!! Keeping up with the yard has not been easy though with the raised panel work!!
Hope your thumb is greener than ours at the moment! Any failures or successes of the garden variety lately?
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