After:
The front of house was looking pretty bad, so I figured that it was time to spruce things up a bit. This whole project cost me about $80 (not including the two planter boxes or the bricks...or the blue pot - IKEA!)[Click here to see how I made the planter boxes]
First thing was to clear out the weeds/grass.Nothing exciting here, just shovel it up and keep what you can.
This area took me about an hour or so to clean up. I put down some landscaping tarp next to hopefully keep any weeds from coming back.
I don't want to be doing that job again any time soon. It really is not that much fun.
Quick lunch break (Mongolian beef and egg drop soup across from the hardware store...) I picked up 4 bags of potters soil and 5 bags of beauty bark, plus all the plants...more on that later.
Just dumped 4 bags of bark in and dropped the boxes in there to make sure everything fit. I ended up propping up the boxes on bricks to make sure it would have good drainage.
I needed some dirt to fill these up about half way. It was just too expensive to do the entire boxes with all potting soil. So I fired up Ol' Blue and got a bucket full out in the back 40. I also scored a wheel barrow full of Llama compost from my neighbor. Those berries should be loving that.
I ended up putting in 4 strawberry plants and a bunch of $0.99 flowers to fill everything up.
I hope I'm not putting them in too soon. I asked the garden woman at the hardware store, and she said I had the green light. They were keeping these plants outside there, so I figured it would be OK.
Here's how the little buggers look planted. I can't wait for some fresh strawberries. Should be fun.
I also planted some raspberries in the back garden as well as some rosemary, oregano, and chives.
Any tips from you master gardeners would be much appreciated!
Thanks
~ron
