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Ready to Start and I have ???s.
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Posted by apoem NM (My Page) on Tue, Jan 27, 04 at 23:43
Ok. I am a very very beginner on trees and yards and such.
So these may seem like very beginner questions and that is what they are.
I have a big backyard so I am going to have to work in stages. The first thing I want to do is clear off the weeds around my kids' play area. They have a square of grass and as there is already irrigation around there for trees and grass, I am hoping it won't be a big deal to get water to other plants I want to put in around this grass. We have planted some trees, I think they are crabapple trees. I want to start by weeding around these trees and putting weed mat down and then bark or flowers or rocks or something. Ultimately, I want this to be as maintance free as possible.
So based on all of that, here are my questions.
1. Around the trees there are little shoot offs of baby trees. It is my guess that I would want to remove these little trees. There are lots of them.
How do I do this? Hard work and a shovel? Some special baby tree killer? When do I do this- spring, fall, now? Is there something I can do or need to do to help prevent these little tree roots from coming up again?
2. After I get the weeds and the baby trees gone, I want to put down weed mat. What I know about weed mat is that you basically put it down and it keeps weeds from coming up. It seems that it would take an awful lot of weed mat to do all the areas in my yard that need doing. Is there something else I can do to help stop the weeds from coming up? I have a huge yard (1 acre) and would like it to eventually be as maintance free as possible and still pleasing. Right now it's just dirt and we can run a tractor over it and cut the weeds down. But I imagine all that weedmat would eventually add up in price. Thoughts? Going on... I would like to put some bark or wood chips around on top of this weed mat. Do I need to do anything special? Put rocks or sand down to hold down the weed mat for instance? AND then later I want to weed and area that is by my fence and start putting flowers down in front of and maybe between some some pine trees. Can I just weed, prepare the soil with some fertilizer or manure and then put the weedmat on top of that then poke a hole in the weedmat where ever I want a shrub or a flower?
Ginger |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Ready to Start and I have ???s.
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| Weed mats ... Never use em .... myself. In time they always seem to find their way to the surface and look rather ugly popping up all over the place ... you spend more time trying to bury or pull out the mat then you did on weeding and then the weeds grow back anyway just as you realized you wasted your time and money .... a "good" weed / landscape fabric can cost as much as sod.... Plant your yard .... don't leave areas barren and unkept ... mulch ... keep your lawn healthy if you have one ... manage your water .... pull some weeds from time to time ... learn about gardening .... use some chemical controls ... stay on top of it .... that is the only way I know of to manage a weed problem ... an acre of land is not low maintenance ..... but can be managed. Good Luck ... get some local garden advice. Give your kids allowance : $$$ / weed. Good Day .... |
RE: Ready to Start and I have ???s.
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| maybee you could consider some shrubs.Or a perenial like lentana is nice and drought tolerant.lentana camara gets fairly big.As for your trees, the offshoots are called suckers and you can take 'em or leave 'em. Remove them if you want a big "normal" looking tree. I don't know about your trees but people around here sometimes trim their olive tree branches into shrubs around the base of the tree(I think it looks kinda lame myself). I don't know about weed mats either. I would rather just plant something I want instead that will eventually overpower the weed. Stages is the way to go. I pick a spot and plant a variety of stuff and then after my interest turns elswhere I will ignore it for a while. The plants that are the most low-matainance are the ones that havn't died. The survivors make up the majority of my landscape. I have over eight years done about four sections of my property this way. It is starting to look descent now. |
RE: Ready to Start and I have ???s.
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| I know you said you have a big area but the way I do it is to cut the weeds down as close to the soil as can get (though this doesn't really matter) and then lay a few layers of newspaper down. Cover the newspaper with a thick layer of mulch. The newspaper rots into the ground eventually. You can also use hessian. Later weeding is as simple as painting weedkiller onto weeds (don't like spraying as it can blow onto wanted plants) or pouring boiling water onto the weed if it's not near the roots of a wanted plant. |
RE: Ready to Start and I have ???s.
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| forget the weedmat and use newspaper as an organic weedmat. over time it will decompose and add organic matter to the soil aswell but its what I use to smother weeds (and if you need lots of it just start asking friends and neighbours to save their old newspapers for you, it wont cost you a cent) then you need to get planting so that you dont have bare earth where the weeds can take over again. I usually do this at the start of each spring (the newspaper will also stop the soil from drying out as quickly) top it with some fresh green mulch (if you have a mulcher) or grass clippings and it will not only smother the weeds but will improve your soil at the same time. |
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