It has been a week and a half since I found this wonderful website. As I have been checking it out and learning how to use it, I decided I would use the blog as my gardening diary. I've never done any kind of a diary before, so I think this will be fun.
For starters I am going to do a retro-active blog on a project I completed June 10, 2018. This was my cactus/succulent garden makeover that I did. Here is what it looked like before I started the makeover...
I loved the cactus that I had growing there, but it kept infringing into my driveway and carport. My plan was to extend it to the left by a few feet. I wasn't sure how much of the cactus I would be able to salvage as I worked in there, but I thought if nothing else I could get some of it started over in the new area.
I started by digging out the sod and border for extension area, and laying down landscape fabric. Then I moved in the old area, digging out the rock that was in there. I was always getting weeds popping up in the rocks in there, so I knew there was a lot of dirt mixed in that needed to be cleaned out. The next few days was spent digging out and washing rock, and dumping it back into the new area.
Once I got to the point where I had to start working around the cactus growth on the far right, I realized that I had to dig a bunch of it out to get around it. I dug out about 6 big chunks that I hoping to salvage. I continued digging out rocks and washing them. My neighbors probably thought I was crazy sitting in my yard with an old colander washing rocks! One of them actually asked if I was panning for gold! (I also had 5 5-gal. pails of rocks in the carport that I had dug out from other areas in my yard in past years. I had to wash these too.)
After I had all the old rock out, I could decide where and how to replant the cacti. I took 2 of the larger pieces and planted them together on the left side. I actually put them both in the same hole, so they could sort of support each other. However one was quite a bit bigger on one side so I used a concrete Indian head ornament to help support it. I planted another chunk back on the right side where I had removed them.
Now everything else is in containers so I can move things around as much as I want. It also helps for plants that are in need of climate control. I have various succulents in there (and plan to put in more) and if there is too much rain, I can just pick up the container and put it in a dry place for a while. Or if something is getting too big for a particular spot, I can either move the container or just cut it back. And it's always fun to redesign what's in the containers for a new look without having dig up the bed!
Here is a container with the original yellow moss rose and a tiny kalanchoe that I was rooting, and some new purchases of crinkle leaf plant, stonecrop, and sweet smelling sedum.
