Buffalo grass lawn

Closeup of buffalo grass

Many of my days this spring and summer have been spent working on our lawn. Last fall we seeded buffalo grass and covered it with huge rolls of erosion control blankets. Those plastic netting and straw blankets helped the dirt and seeds stay put. But they weren't perfectly successful and they didn't control the weeds.

There is one big challenge with starting buffalo grass: it's a warm season grass. That means it sprouts late allowing the weeds to get a head start. So pulling weeds has been my job. And I pulled A LOT.

This rainy summer has been both a blessing and a curse for our new lawn. Buffalo grass is drought tolerant, giving it a resilience that helps in it's competition with weeds. This summer the rain gave the weeds all the water they needed :-( ...that's the curse. The blessing was in the ease with which I could pull the weeds :-) But, still, I have developed arthritis in my hands. So it's a good thing I don't have to pull as many weeds now.

Once the buffalo grass was freed of the weed competition it took over quickly. It spreads like crabgrass sending runners all over the place. And it holds tight to the soil so that most weeds pull out of the soil without pulling up the buffalo grass.

I haven't mowed our new lawn, so it doesn't look manicured like most lawns yet. The grass is 5 or 6 inches tall right now and in the thickest places totally smothers any weeds that try to grow. It has a very fine texture and is incredibly soft to walk through. Jeremy says it looks so soft that it makes him want to lay down on it. (He doesn't do that, though, because it's pretty buggy!)

We are looking forward to enjoying the benefits of this special grass next season. Hopefully, its naturally short stature and drought tolerance will mean very little mowing and no watering. And all those hours pulling weeds this year will not be repeated!

More chickens...and eggs!

So we've added a few new characters to our little menagerie - 7 more hens.

Some of the new hens on their first day at our farm.

We discovered, for sure, that two of our seven little chicks are roosters. We knew that Donny (formerly Dott) was a rooster. He's been crowing for a month already. But Thistle, even though he looked like a rooster to me, had never crowed. Never, that is, until August 2nd.

Unfortunately, two roosters will need more than five hens. That means we either needed to get rid of one of our roosters, which would break my heart, or find more hens. And, if we got more hens, we needed more coop - and fast!

Lucky for me, I got an email from a nearby farmer needing to sell some of his older, less productive laying hens. Perfect! So I started building onto the coop, adding 10 more square feet of floor space and another next box. And by August 6th we had 7 more hens. All of that was a lot harder than you might think. I generally do not move that fast ;-)

And this was our first egg the next morning.

 Our new, mature hens are too old to lay an egg a day. We're happy with that, though, because we couldn't eat a dozen eggs every day! They are doing just fine and have added a lot of fun and goofy chicken stories to our days as they have gradually found their place with our younger chickens. Finding an egg or 3 everyday when I open the next boxes is nothing short of delightful. I absolutely love having chickens - and I am so glad we could keep both roosters.

Aren't these pretty?! Those bluish eggs are from
the two new (mature) Americauna hens: Heidi and Snow

Greenhouse progress

Remember "Backhoe Brent"? Well, he has been working hard to build a sturdy greenhouse for the farm. The project has come a long way since the last post about it! And, thankfully, Brent had some help to move things along.

Blaine and all the boys helped build the foundation.

Brent and all the boys helped move those cinder blocks Brent salvaged from the old house. It took a lot of those to build the foundation walls. They also dug an additional trench that serves to drain water from around that foundation. Gravel has been added to the bottom to support and level the cinder blocks.

Brent's brother Bryan helped install the post brackets
and bolts that will hold the framing.

Brent used mortar to hold the cinder blocks together. Then, with help from his brother Bryan, he installed brackets and bolts set with concrete that will hold the posts and framing. In addition, rebar was passed down through the blocks to the ground and held in place with cement. This will insure the walls resist bowing (unlike the walls of the old garage which are bowed terribly).

Here's a photo of the "finished" foundation.

Outside of the foundation walls Brent added perforated pipe and covered that with gravel. He also filled inside the walls with gravel, making sure there was a good amount in the corner near that drainage trench. He left a couple of small gaps in the cinder blocks in that corner so that, should a significant amount of water get inside the structure, it will have a place to drain.

Next, the dirt inside the greenhouse needed to be leveled out to see if we would need more fill. But, as you can see in the photo below, it looks like we already have the perfect amount inside the structure.

My handsome husband surveying the greenhouse "floor"

The next step is framing the walls. It will start to take shape quickly now!

What a big project! And this is what he does to relax on the weekends.

Improved terraces for the blueberries

Ok, so I know it's been quite a while since I wrote the post about the torrential rain. But shortly after the rainstorm just about washed away the blueberry bushes, I improved the terracing.

I've added rock to the original terrace and built a
second terrace above the plants to stop water washing onto the plants.

The new terrace is finished with mulch and gravel.

The second terrace is intended to allow water to seep, rather than flow. The line of gravel that you see in the lower photo will help the water flow across the upper terrace. That should help distribute the water more evenly to all six plants.

Yesterday, which is several weeks after those photos were taken, I decided to create a gravel lined drain. I noticed that dirt was still washing onto the mulch surrounding the two plants closest to the house. So I've dug a "ditch" to extend the gravel in front of those two plants. Then the ditch switches back to travel up the hill ending just below the lip of the rain garden.

We'll need to check things out tomorrow morning to see how well that new feature held up to the 2.5" of rain we got today. Of course, it's not very pretty since it's just dirt and gravel. But, if that held, we will know we've solved the issue. I'll make sure to take a picture :-)