Any advice for starting new beds?

Any of you remember me earlier saying that I was contemplating tearing out my lawn to put in flowers? Well, I have not torn out the whole lawn but I have decided to put in a long, snaky bed around my backyard that will wind around a sitting area/grill. It winds around a couple oak trees and a pine. So I have a mix of full sun and shade. Yesterday I marked out with some contractor's paint the outline of my new bed. It is 10 feet wide and (hold on to your hats)225 feet long!

I just finished up using round up to kill the grass. Intend to till up in about 10 days and plant some of my spring bulbs. Have purchased a number of alliums (giganteum, globemaster, and gladiator) as well as some tulips. Want to see about getting some bearded iris, which I have never grown. Will likely move yet this fall some of my artemesia, black eyed susans, gayfeathers, mums, daylilys, lady's mantle, phlox, purple coneflower, sneezeweed, speedwell, spiderwort, globe thistle, hardy geraniums, hollyhocks, beardtongue and japanese anemone. Probably also move one of my peony bushes. In the spring I plan on moving some of my butterfly bushes to the bed. Have some malva that I will likely move then along with some of my David Austin roses.

Before moving anything, I will be tilling in some of the fallen leaves and mulch from old garden. I don't know yet what other kind of amendments I should make because this area has been lawn ever since I can remember and have no real idea of what lies beneath. My soil varies quite a bit around here, running from pretty good to hard clay.

As you can probably tell, I am pretty excited with this project and want to make sure I do things right. Hence, this post. Any advice? I have never started a bed before. Have only planted in established ones before now. Thanks everyone for any advice you can give me.

Kelly

this sounds so exciting but will surely be a challenge. I'd dig up a few spots of grass before I use the Round-up and take a soil sample in each area. Send it off through your local Cooperative extension agency (you can get the boxes from them before you begin). You will get a letter from your State University where the soil is analyzed, making recommendations. You probably will not understand, but call the horticultural agent to explain it to you.
If you need lime, I would till that in along with a lot of Black Kow and bone meal to give your soil some good organic stuff. However, if you are faced with a lot of hard packed clay, you will probably need some material to soften it up and make it hold moisture, but drain nicely. In extremely bad soil, you can actually use gypsum to break it up. This all sounds rather expensive for such a big area, so you may want to tackle part of it at a time...

This message was edited Sunday, Sep 7th 3:29 PM

beardtongue--wow! what a project! I've been rearranging & widening beds since last summer. I can sympathize with you! Show us some photos as you progress!

This is one of my enlarged beds...

bt... what a project! I can barely manage one new bed a year if it's not more that 6-8' x 20'.

You do know that tilling will likely unearth all the dormant grass seed? Have you looked into the no-till gardens? Lasagna gardening is one approach.

Good Luck, and show us photos as you progress, please!

Darius, after my post this morning, I started reading on line about lasagna gardening. Decided that might be a better approach since the prospect of tilling up sod was not appealing and because I do not really know what kind of soil lies beneath. Got a friend to give me all the newspapers she had stocked up for recycling and gathered up mine. But going to take a lot given the size of my bed. Do you know if I can use large sheets of cardboard in place of newspapers? That would make it go a lot faster.

Any advice on layers for the lasagna bed? Are you required to add top soil as one of the layers? I have seen some sources that do not seem to include any and others that do.

I will post photos as I go along. Think my next weekend is going to be a laborious one!

bt... unfortunately, I have never done 'Lasagna' gardening. There has been some discussion on it here in the forums... you might do a search for 'lasagna gardening' and see what comes up.

bt, a friend of mine did a veggie garden lasagna style a couple of years ago. It took her a full year to have the new bed ready to plant. It had been lawn until that time. She used old carpet remnants as a first layer; that is what took the longest to break down.

A lot of what you plan to install in your new border will actually thrive in pretty lousy soil -- artemisia, gayflower, black-eyed susan, and purple cone-flower do much better in not-overly rich soil. Some of the other things, like the peony and roses will need extra enriching. Can you plan the area to group those things together? It will make bed preparation and maintenance much easier.

I have created many new garden areas out of lousy soil, so I have learned a LOT the hard way. Eliminating all weeds, no matter what kind, is the most important first step.

beardtongue, I'm sorry, I didn't read your post carefully enough and thought you were a beginning gardner. So to be specific, iris are my specialty although most are planted at my daughter's. We are going to begin selling a few (very few) this year. I really looked all over for iris sellers and was really interested in the reblooming irises too. Probably the biggest iris sellers are Schreiner's and Cooley's, both can be found on the internet. Other, less expensive ones are Iris City Garden, Enchanted April, Iris Test Garden, and Sutton's. There are others, you might want to do a Google search. One of the DG members, puttytat, owns Sutton's and has posted tons of pictures of her irises.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Member "Puttytat" DOES NOT OWN SUTTON'S, and asked me to post this to quickly clear up any confusion or miscommunications :)
Terry

They are beautiful and I have bought from her and they are very nice. You might also want to look on ebay. There are lots of them there. But be careful, the bidding can get out of hand and you will pay more than you can get them from the catalogs....

This message was edited Sunday, Sep 7th 8:12 PM

On my last daylily bed, I just laid down 4 layers of newspaper with cypress mulch over it directly over the sod. I tore open holes in it & peeled back paper where I wanted the irises to go. It worked great! no weeds between daylilies & super absorbent of what little rain we get. no grass came thru the newspaer/mulch layer.

Woodspirit, thanks for the info on iris. I bought a few bulbs yesterday when I went shopping for ingredients for my lasagna garden. As I said, I have never grown any before. Will they bloom next summer? I take it that they increase over time, right? How much space do you give a rhizome to spread? I bought 4 rhizomes of 3 different iris. I picked up royal knight, gay parasol and Dover Beach. I am thinking they might look nice with some of the large globemaster allium bulbs I have picked up. I understand that the alliums last a while and so while they bloom in May, am hoping they will still be around when the iris bloom.

Wanda, your daylily bed sounds wonderful and glad to hear that yours has no grass pushing up. My thought is that I need to add more layers to my planned bed because I am not really wanting to have to contend with the soil beneath. I have no idea what it is like but fear it may be pretty hard clay in places because there were large areas of clay deposits in my existing garden spot. It absolutely wore me out! The only problem with my having such a large bed is that I need a lot of greens to add. Have ripped off large leaves from my now fading large sunflowers (about 10 feet tall) and thrown in some faded flowers. Have even ripped off rhubarb leaves to add to the mix! Sure hope this all works out. I have no experience composting and so this is all very, very new to me.

Kelly

If they are good-sized rhizomes, they might bloom next year. Yes they multiply and need to be divided about every 3rd year. I have a sheet on iris cultivation I made up for my daughter's customers and I will send you one if you will e-mail me with your snail mail addy. I would just scan and e-mail it to you but my scanner is busted.

Woodspirit, you have mail! As for the rhizomes I bought yesterday, the label says that they are size no. 1. Is that good? I was really hoping to have blooms next year.

Part of the motivation for making this bed now is that I will be hosting a 50th anniversary party for my parents next June. Am hoping I will have several things in bloom at that time.

Kelly

I don't know what size No. 1 means. I think growers use those terms arbitrarily. Give them plenty of bone meal when you plant them and then fertilize them again next spring. Remember too much nitrogen gives you lots of growth but not much bloom......

... and don't forget, bulbs (and I assume rhizomes) can rot if in direct contact with the bone meal.

I just read somewhere that bonemeal is not processed the way it used to be and so does not supply the nutrients bulbs need; the article said that commercial bulb food should be used instead. Anyone ever hear of that?

Also bulbs are graded for size. I know that the largest daffodil bulbs for example will have 2 or 3 noses which means 2 or 3 bloom stalks, while smaller bulbs will have only one nose.

I will be careful with the bonemeal. Thanks!

Now I have another question regarding, well, horse poo, and whether this is okay to use on my new bed. There are quite a few amish families that live in my area and I have a neighbor who knows a couple of them. He says that the amish have quite large piles of manure from their horses because they don't spread it on their fields. My fear is that by using the horse manure I may inadvertently be sowing new weed seeds into my nice, weed-free bed! Would this happen if I use horse manure?

My same neighbor, who is a retired flower farmer, is willing to call around while I am at the office today to check into the availability of compost in the area. He recalls that a local municipality started a large composting project with neighborhood leaves etc. If everything is composted, then I won't have to worry about weeds, right? Sorry for my ignorance but I have never composted and know very, very little about it. This new lasagna bed is as close as I have gotten to composting and I sure do want to make sure I am doing things right. TIA!

Kelly

I'm happy to say that it's been years since I shoveled horse manure... No help here!

bt, the 'neighborhood' compost that my city provides merely grinds up all the stuff they collect from the sidewalks, and puts it in plies to slowly compost. It's free. BUT, it contains a bit of EVERYTHING people put into brush piles... poison ivy, whole weed plants still with seed heads attached, brush that's been chemically treated and the like, along with the good leaves and branches.

I will not use it, even FREE.

Horse manure, fully composted, is fine. There's generally enough heat in it as it composts to kill any seeds that may be still in the feed. If they feed alfalfa, it's a plus!

What an ambitious project you have! I'll be watching for progress pictures.

The horse manure needs to be put in a pile for at least a few months before using it on any bed. Even if you don't maintain it as a "compost pile", the heat it generates will kill any weed seed that may be present. If you spread it uncomposted, it is too strong and could very easily kill young or tender plant roots.

Our county maintains compost facilities; they cook it thoroughly; no fears about getting any weed seed/disease when I use it! When I get a truck load (courtesy of my neighbor) it is still gently steaming in the truckbed when he brings it. I have to be careful to allow it to cool before I use it -- in past years I have spread it while still hot and temporarily burned the grass! Oops :)

Well, my project continues to move forward. Yesterday I had delivered 10 yards of screened top soil and 17 yards of shredded bark. Have laid down cardboard and newspapers and covered with peat moss as to about 1/3 of the bed. Looks like I am going to have a busy weekend!

My prayers go with you for a strong back and a nice breeze...