More Garden Work

I had about half-bale of straw and 30’ of jute matting left over from seeding the berms, as well as some red clover seed and blue grama seed. So I decided to put this all to good use and seeded the flatish area between the south berm and my house. The result is shown on the left, right after I watered it — so the jut netting looks dark, with the uncovered straw in the foreground and the previously-seeded berm on the right.The berms are seeded in blue grama and buffalo grass. The germinated grass is clearly visible on the right side of the photo. I hope, eventually, to have red clover on the flat part of my yard (where there are no shrubs). So this newly sown strip may serve as a transition between the grass on the berms and the clover on the flat.

I had to drive to Albuquerque on Monday (to the nearest Apple store, 2.5 hours away, each way — what a change from Seattle, where we lived 5 minutes from the Apple Store) so I stopped in Santa Fe to pick up the Blue Oat Grass (aka Blue Avena) at Agua Fria Nursery. This seems to be a small family operation, and their information systems are not quite current. [It took three phone calls (two from me, one from Monrovia Nursery, the supplier) to determine that they actually arrived (three weeks ago) and were ready to be picked up.]

So I planted these ornamental grasses on the house side of the north berm (per master plan). I also have some Agastache to plant in front of the house. I spent the past two days (off and on) loosening the ‘pit run’ ‘soil’ that was formerly the parking pad for this lot. Dug out a lot of fist-sized rocks too. Tomorrow I will buy my first bag of Taos compost to amend this into something I hope the plants will like.