Welcome to my new blog. Here I plan to record the seasonal changes in my garden. I hope this blog will help me look back at everything we did in the garden during a given month or season. I plan to add lots of pictures to help me remember how the plants and beds looked over a period of time. I hope this record helps you as you work on your garden. If you find the content useful please leave a comment.
What kind of garden I am talking about? And what does it look like today? We live in what used to be the Blackland Prairie, hence the blog name, My Garden Prairie. When we bought this house we inherited a typical suburban garden with non-native shrubs and a lawn. The kind of garden that provides no food or shelter to birds or pollinators. The primary purpose of this garden is to look manicured all year around for the humans who live and work in the area. We lived with it for far too long until last year we decided to redesign the space.
Last year we cleaned out the flower beds in the front yard and removed some shrubs - mainly Holly. We ripped out the old rusty metal border and replaced it with pavers. We did all the work ourselves. We planted a lot of native plants and added mulch for weed control. The plants were dormant through the winter and have just started growing again. But that is a different post.
In the backyard we have a few built out raised beds. We are cleaning them out one at a time and adding good soil with compost. The bed in the picture below had a downspout emptying into it. You can see the remnants of the pop ups to disperse the water. When we had the gutters replaced they took the downspout around the corner and saved the bed from excessive moisture. It is now ready for planting but I am not sure what I will plant here. Got a nice picture of a Bobcat visiting us last week.
The bed below is another raised bed in the backyard. It was a mess too. The downspout drained into it directly and the soil was always moist. It was not possible to move the downspout so we disconnected the pipe that dumped water in the bed and put in this temporary attachment. It is working well to keep the bed dry but it has to be drained out after it stops raining. We will need a permanent solution soon but for now this works. I planted some greens in this flower bed last fall. They sprouted but didn't grow much. I hope they will take off now as spring has arrived.
Gardening was big on the spring calendar this year but as the virus makes its way into the US we are forced to work from home. Last week my office and all the offices in the state went into lock down. My commute was very short to begin with but now it is zero. That should give us a lot of time in the garden. If we all do our part we should be back in the office in summer.
