The front yard is finally getting a make over! I have weeded out this space 4 times since we moved in 3.5 years ago only for it to fully grow back because we lacked the time, energy or money to follow it through to completion. We hate how the front of our house has looked but the weeding is back breaking work. Our San Fernando Valley soil is clay and weeding this stuff has literally destroyed my knuckles. For Mother's Day Dave got me some help to clear out the entire front yard. What I thought would be a weekend project has turned out to be on-going since May 8th. I can't complain. This time I'm not doing any of the work and the progress is coming along.
Despite my protests we ended up using weed killer. Turns out all my half starts at tearing out this space only made things worse. With each time I weeded and didn't finish, it allowed the weeds to come back even stronger. They dug deeper and grew around the existing plants that I do want to keep. The only way to insure the crab grass won't come back and ruin the work were about to do is to spray with weed killer. And so we they did and it's one reason why this is taking longer than planned.
First they tore out the grass/weed and hauled it all away. Then they sprayed and we waited a week to see what was still alive. Last weekend they tilled up half the yard and resprayed. This weekend they're suppose to come back and till up the other side and respray.
It's rained quite a bit since this project started. I thought it would dilute the weed killer and ruin the progress but it's quite the opposite. The weed killer is still doing it's job and the rain allows us to easily spot where the crab grass is still alive. I know the weed killer will save us money and a lot more work but I can't help but think about the toxic crap that's filtering into our soil. I hate it. On the other hand I can't let all this time and money go to waste. I'm grateful someone else is doing the spraying. I make P run into the house past this area. We won't be in this space until the mulch and decomposed granite gets put down.
The progress looks like this so far:
Second Week:
Third Week:
Labels: garden
