Groundcover

Irish Moss

My brother expressed an interest in Eco-Lawn, so yesterday, my dad and I went to Sage Garden Herbs to get him a bag.  I also tried to get a swamp milkweed, but they'd sold out.

On the way home, we stopped by Ron Paul garden centre and I fell in love with picked up some Irish Moss and clover seed.

If you've never had the chance to put your hand in Irish moss, imagine...  a plant that looks like the one on the left; smells like fresh, growing grass, and feels like a pile of thin rubber bands that someone cut so that they were strings, and then they all tangled up into a mess, but instead of being made of rubber, they were alive and growing and had tiny white flowers throughout.  Then add two litres of joy and shake well.  That's about what feeling Irish moss is like.

I wound up buying two 4" square pots of prolific, flowering Irish moss, for about $4 each.

I got all artsy and took these photos:

Then Mom had a doctor's appointment and had to get medicine after so we went to SuperStore.  I frolicked around the garden centre.  And guess what I found!  More Irish moss!

I couldn't resist.  I bought this three pack from Stepables for ten bucks.  ...And while I was there, I picked up these four-for-ten-dollars perennials by PC:

• 2x Alpine Columbines
• 1x "Winky mix" Columbine
• 1x Rudbeckia (I forget what kind, will check it out and correct post later)

I'm soooo baaaaaad!!!  

Anyway, I decided to use the Irish moss as a border around the outside of my 3x6 raised bed, since the slippery clay was getting annoying.  I used all three Stepables, but couldn't bear to touch the flowering ones yet.  I...  I feel they need to go somewhere more special somehow...  

3x6 bed before:

 

And after:

 

I threw in some coconut coir mulch against the clay, too.  I'm not sure that bunching it around the moss was such a great idea, though.  Tomorrow, I'll clear the mulch so the moss can touch more soil...  

Clover

Well, looks like the rabbits really like clover.  

Left:  The little patch of clover I planted.  

Today, I took out the landscaping fabric and sprinkled some clover seed in; then fenced the whole lot off with some cheap white fencing.

I'm hoping that once the clover grows into a nice big patch, the rabbits will prefer to nibble on that instead of my vegetable garden.  I'm not yet sure about how I'll deter birds, though I'm optimistic about Sparklies.  

Eco- Turf-Lawn!

As it turns out, my brother didn't want the bag of Eco-Lawn just yet.  So Dad asked me to seed it into the front lawn.  Per the instructions, I mowed the lawn as short as possible.  

Then I brought out the rake to thatch the lawn.  But there was still ridiculous amounts of topsoil sitting on top of the grass.  So that was a bit futile.  But I did rake out the dead grass, and make spaces in the topsoil for the grass seed.  

Left:  A seed/fertiliser spreader.  

I then used this seed spreader (which was not a great design, and was a bit stiff) to spread some Eco-Lawn (grass) and Eco-Turf (clover) seed.  This should be interesting!  

I'll also mention this bit about the lawnmower...  It's, like, six horsepower, which is stupid powerful for our uses.  (It's also too tall for me, which hurts my wrists, but that's not the point).  And it's had a nasty habit of stopping when the grass is too thick.  After mowing, I went to investigate this...  

I turned the mower on its side and scraped out a mound of grass.  

Heaps of composting grass!

Well, guess that means more compost for me!

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