the annual mulch roundup

It took a few days, but I'm glad to say that the annual mulch extravaganza is done for the year, and the pile of cardboard by the back shed is completely gone. This year, we were finally able to tackle the infamous median strip, so the grass eradication project is slowly but surely coming to fruition.

This year, I dispensed with the informality of hauling mulch one truckload at a time, and just ordered a dumptruck-load. At first glance, it's way spendier, but I figure when you factor in the gas (from all the back-and-forth trips), it might be pretty close to the DIY price. It's definitely a huge time-saver, and it's nice to not have to sweep out the back of the truck at the end of it all, or worry about mulch blowing around while you drive down the road.

This year, I went with Clackamas Compost Products (instead of Mt. Scott which is way closer to home, but they charge more for delivery). What Clackamas Compost lacks in sheer variety, is more than compensated for by the ease of service. The guy showed up bright and early on Friday, just like I asked for, and I got right to work spreading mulch.

I put down a new layer on the the front beds (they were looking a bit "threadbare", no doubt due to the fact that all the obnoxious neighborhood cats think of them as their personal litterbox--eww! I also did the garden in the back for the first time, hoping that it'll do something to alleviate this clay/hardpan/riverrock that I have. (You practically need a pickaxe just to dig any kind of holes back there to plant something, and if you needed to dig down deep enough to plant a shrub or tree, I swear you'd need a backhoe!) I also put down a ton of cardboard/newspaper for weed suppression because it's nearly impossible to keep up with handweeding this space, and the clay's too rock-hard to use a hoe on. Pretty much anywhere there wasn't a plant growing got the cardboard/newspaper treatment...Hopefully next year I won't have to do nearly so much handweeding...trust me, I won't have the time for it.

The front and side yard got re-done more for cosmetic reasons than weed-suppression. The cardboard and newspaper I put down last year seemed to do an adequate job of keeping the weeds/grass from making a comeback. Only the dandelions were strong enough to come up through that, and they were easy to pull. Plus, soil improvement is just as sorely needed in front as anywhere else around here.

The best part, though, was finally eradicating the grass/weeds in the median strip. It's a pain to mow because there's lots of shrubbery out there (service berries, thimbleberries, currants, etc), and of course, the ground is far too hard to dig in to plant anything else. I've always wanted this grass (and the weeds) gone, gone, gone, since all they do is create more work for me, so it was very gratifying to get out there and bury it all under cardboard and newspaper. (Cardboard and newspaper are the poor man's weedcloth--and if done correctly, work nearly as well in my opinion.)

The nice bonus this was an ideal time to get rid of all the huge boxes left over from the bamboo flooring, (in a sense, it was sort of a zero-waste home renovation purchase: the flooring ended up on the floor, the existing carpeting was recycled at East County Recycling, the plastic wrap was recycled at FarWest Fibers, the foam sheets went to PLC in North Portland, the paper got recycled in the municipal curbside recycling, and the boxes will slowly breakdown over the winter and smother out the weeds and grass underneath).

Since it's an area that gets blasted mercilessly by full sun all day long, so we went out and bought some drought-tolerant groundcovers to help anchor the new mulch. I went with some sedums, some kinnick-kinnick, creeping raspberry, and some oregano. I would have liked some thyme, but they didn't have any in stock. Eventually I'll plant some other stuff out there too...when I have time, that is.

It feels good to have that done for the year, and done before the rains start up again and dictate when you can get some work done.