Garden, Grass, Squirrels, Clover, and salt

My garden continues to grow, but I’ve never grown broccoli before, and did not stake them. We had some wind and they are all falling over and I will have to see if I can stake them this weekend.

It’s not terrible, but I need them to grow up due to my limited space.

I did tie up the jute twine for my tomatoes. I am using tomato clips. I think I got like 300 for a ridiculously cheap price on Amazon.

You just clip them on the twine and the tomato and you are done.

I am also fighting the animals. Squirrels dig a lot of holes in the dirt in my yard. Since it’s not full of grass, they really go to town.

I do it to myself because we have so many bird and squirrel feeders around.

We have several of those black basket peanut and corn feeders. We get a lot of crows with them. I love crows and they won’t eat out of a feeder, and honestly I love the squirrels too. We have an enormous number of squirrels all over.

When we redo the deck, I will make a more permanent set up for them. This is just until then.

Below is the disaster that is my front lawn.

My lawn is half dead because they got it green enough to see the house, and it’s just dying. That crap fill dirt is the same in the front of the house. It’s filled with rocks, glass and rusty nails. I don’t like grass anyways, so I am re-seeding with clover. It’s actually starting to work.

I think it’s doing better than the dying grass. I have seeded twice, and will do it again in July here. It doesn’t grow as tall, and is way greener.

Then I have this problem:

The driveway and front walks have a bare inch of gravel and no landscaping fabric was laid down. I had thought it was weird there was like a gallon of heavy duty weed killer in the shed when we moved in. I guess that was their solution. I am not so keen on that. I don’t want to put damaging chemicals in the ground.

Instead, I am trying rock salt. Just Morton’s rock salt. I have mixed it up in solution of 2 cups for a gallon of water, and sprayed it with a hand held sprayer, but this last time I got tired of carrying it so I just sprinkled rock salt all over. I got more salt in, and then watered it in. It’s working, but slowly.

You do have to be careful to not get it in your lawn. It will kill anything. I am hoping after several treatments, this will make the driveway and walk ways ungrowable. the walkway is kind of temporary?

We do plan to install a large fence when we do the decks, and change the walkway layouts. We will add another walkway straight to the road, and straighten out this one in the picture to the driveway. I will probably do like I am planning in the back, and make a wide gravel walk, done right this time, with big 2′ X 2′ pavers for stepping stones. It will carve out more grass out of my small lawn. The less grass the better. It’s not ecologically a good ground cover choice.

It’s just so novel for me to be able to work on these things and make a difference. I am not used to this, having been a renter for so long. I still feel grateful every day we managed to get into a house.