Re: [gardeners] Hot, sweaty, and feeling good
penny x stamm (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Wed, 8 Apr 1998 00:46:57 -0400
Cynthia, that sounds like an enormous job all for one summer..
Is it a new house for you, or a new hobby? Do you work it all
alone? How much property is there? And when is your last frost date?
My garden's been in about 12 years or so, and we are still cutting back
the borders of the lawn. If we don't, then Jimmie's Weed Whacker
whips off the lower branches of all the shrubbery when he's trimming
the lawn, and it all looks awful.. Faced with that job again now, I am
wondering just what is a sod cutter? The landscape boys have lawn
trimming down pat: they sharpen their straight-edged shovel to a knife
edge, then place the shovel on the grass at a 45 degree angle, give
one thrust, and go ka-choong, ka-choong all the way around in about
60 seconds! We tried that, and managed to get the shovel to penetrate
the soil in 60 seconds ...
I don't mind hauling it away to the compost -- it's the digging which
kills me.
Here in zone 6, it's too cold to plant anything except the earliest
stuff such as peas. We're still cleaning up from the winter mess
of leaves, pine needles, and broken branches. Oh yes, it is lawn
cutting time, nevertheless -- when Jim does it on time, we let the
grass fall, but often he's late, and that means he's got to collect
it all, and cart it to the compost. More work, of course.
Does anybody have experience with adding lots of pine needles to
the compost? We get swamped with them every fall, and last autumn
was the first time we included them in the compost. They have NOT
decomposed even one tiny bit!
Penny Stamm, NY
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