Thursday, September 30, 2010

Now I have a House: Part 1- My own backyard

The ecohungry blog of old had a section entitled "For When I Have A House," This new section will be about what I am actually doing with the house. I am putting my money where my mouth was.

When we bought out house in April, the backyard was a barren wasteland. Literally, dirt and rocks (lots of rocks). So I made a blueprint of the yard and the things we wanted the space to do for us. Automatically, we decided that we needed some grass, a play area for the kids, a garden, a compost pile and a place for a deck/patio. Here's how it has broken down so far:

Grass: Yes, I know traditionally there are more sustainable choices out there. My family consists of three active children and turning the whole yard into a garden or a rock/zeroscape we didn't feel was our best choice. So we did put grass in about 1/3rd of the yard. We watered sparingly (perhaps a little to sparingly, as it is now a lovely brown color). The grass we felt was important to help keep the dirt from coming into the house and to provide the kids a place to play soccer and such.

Play-yard: A large section of the yard was boxed in and made into a playground for the kids. My parents generously provided a swing set and trampoline, but I felt that grass in this area would make it hard to mow around these objects, and more importantly a mulched play yard would provide a level of safety. So I looked at the options out there for a more sustainable surface for the yard. My ideal was to put in recycled rubber mulch for longevity. This had its draw backs. 1. It was VERY expensive. 2. The people I talked to who did have it said it turned their kids clothes and skin black because the rubber wasn't clean enough. So this leads us to wooden playground mulch. This product is fairly affordable and would still provide some weed control. The drawback here is that it will break down over time and we will have to add more. But this is the option we choose. Hopefully, we will be finishing this project this weekend with the funds that we made from our garage sale.

Garden: I loved my garden this year!!!! However, the first year of my garden didn't produce the highest yield and it took a lot of work. I will probably be posting often on my gardening ideas, it has become a passion are for me. But here is the rundown. Garden area was FULL of landscaping rocks. We have spent several days this summer shoveling large quantities of rock from the yard. And there are weeks more work to get the rocks out. My garden is no exception. I feel that when I till the garden for the fall I will be able to get out a good number more and hopefully next year the problem won't be as prevalent. Once the rock was out, the soil left behind isn't the greatest. We tilled some compost in, but I don't think it was enough. So soil modification is something that I am going to have to pay good attention to this winter. I am already planning to plant a cover crop to keep the soil from compacting again. But the soil wasn't too bad for the ever present weeds in the garden. Apparently in Colorado, bindweed is an aggressive weed that is almost impossible to get rid of, and my garden is no exception. Obliviously, herbicides are not an option for me for moral reasons. I did my best at hand picking them, but this viney weed is persistent. The plan for the fall is to double dig the garden and pull out as many of the roots systems as possible. I feel that this will be a yearly exercise for me to keep the garden free of this nasty weed.

Compost: Just a few words here as I will undoubtedly have more to say of the topic later. Here is the most important thing to take from this: Your table scraps in compost can make beautiful food for next year's garden. Your table scraps in the landfill make harmful methane. It is ever so important that if you can, compost. I am sure I am not doing it quite right yet, and I know I have much to learn. But every bit of non-meat/dairy waste from our house goes in the compost and I am very proud of this fact.

Deck/patio: Still a barren wasteland. The other areas of the yard and house have taken our time. But on a good note the old carpet the we pulled out of the house and put in the patio area to keep the weeds down is now gone. I am sure that my mother will be very grateful, that our yard no longer rivals so many others riddled with excess garbage.

Sorry for the long post

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