That is, a few short items on gardening, since it seems as if all I do these days is garden.
These include:
- The FROGS. OMG, the FROGS.
- Recycling campaign signs into temporary raised beds.
- Solarizing lawn to convert it to garden beds.
- Heating the soil by covering with black plastic.
SGM, ISO tadpole-oriented SGF
WARNING: Turn down the volume before you play this. I wish I could do the same in real life.
Last year, we had frogs in our neighborhood for the first time since we moved to this house 15 years ago. This year, they’re back. Apparently the Gray Tree Frog is now a permanent part of the landscape.
What I had not realized, until this year, is that the soothing “cheep, cheep, cheep” noise of massed frogs, from a distance, is composed of much ear-rattling croaking, when heard close up.
One of our (now) resident Gray Tree Frogs seems to have found my water barrels to his liking, and was seeking company in that location a couple of nights ago. The recording above, off my cell phone, does not do justice to the smoke-alarm-like ear-piercing annoyance of that frog call, close up.
In any case, my back porch is unusable at night now, until the frogs have done their thing and moved on with their lives.
Use #27 for obsolete political yard signs: Temporary raised bed.
High-quality political yard signs are made from coroplast (corrugated plastic). They are, in effect, like cardboard, but made out of polypropylene. They have excellent stiffness in the direction of the corrugations, and the plastic is waterproof and will stand up to several seasons in the sun.
I recycled a bunch of obsolete political yard signs to make my garden beds back in 2020 (Post G05). They are showing some wear, but still holding up in their fifth season of use.
This year, I needed some small, short, temporary raised beds to contain the “mounds” for planting my winter squash. Turns out, one 18″ x 24″ campaign sign will yield a roughly 16″ square raised bed, 6″ deep. Which is just about right for growing a squash plant or two. Just cut it in four pieces, cut slots halfway-through those four pieces, and push them together like Knex or Tinker Toys.
Failed soil solarization
Last year, the central section of my garden was covered in lawn. This spring, I covered it with black plastic, after putting down a couple of rows of builder’s paper and leaf mulch. This, in preparation for converting it to more gardening space this year.
Turns out, a couple of months under black plastic is more than enough time to kill off the lawn, that is, the grass. But not nearly enough time to kill off all the weeds.
In this case, there’s some stolon-based grass (maybe Bermuda grass) that has not given up yet.
The moral of the story is that “solarizing” a piece of ground for (say) three seasons is enough to kill nearly everything underneath the plastic. At least, in this area it is. But a couple of spring months is only enough to kill the grass, not the rest of whatever was growing in my lawn.
I’m sure I’ll be paying for this all summer, but I went ahead and planted what I want to grow, figuring I’ll go after that weed by cutting and pulling it whenever I see it. Which, based on the alarming rate at which it is now greening up, is going to be often.
Finally, I’m not entirely sure I should even call this process of covering lawn with black plastic “solarization”. The theory behind solarization is that you cook the soil enough to kill both weeds and weed seeds. That may be true, when done mid-summer. But in this case, in the cool spring temperatures, it was the lack of light and water that killed off (most of) the plants under the plastic.
Soil heating using black plastic.
Source: Builditsolar.com, underlying data are from Virginia Tech.
As a final note, the soil at the center of the area that I had covered in black plastic was about 5 degrees F warmer than the soil just outside this area. That, four inches below the surface.
Consulting the chart above, at this time of the year, that amounts to maybe a two-week head start on spring soil warm-up.
I judge that to be not worth doing. That is, I would not lay down black plastic for months on end, just to get a couple of weeks ahead on the spring planting schedule, for those plants that require warmer soil.
YMMV.
