have I lost my mind today or.....?

I'm considering turning all the lawn area in back over to MGs. I can't dig out the bermuda for beds, I've tried and it kills my back to dig caliche. can't hire the work done either. So, if I gave it all over the MGs and just put in a few plantings (in pots of course) I wouldn't have to do anything but water, collect seeds and enjoy it..
Maybe I could have some interesting grasses set around also, for texture and let the MGs mix and match at will. Right now it sounds heavenly to me.

Is that even possible? Would the MGs take over the bermuda and how many seasons would it take? guesses?

Jude

I'm not sure who would win the MG vs. Bermudagrass smackdown, but I would rather have the MG's any day!

that was my thinking and also since wannabegardener just sent me a bunch of trumpet vines, they can grow on the block walls too, along with the MGs. That will be a real battle of wills.

pweelee - The MG's will not take over if you are vigilant about collecting the seeds...also the annual MG's can be easily mowed down with a lawnmower and the annuals ones that are keep cut down with the lawnmower can't produce new seeds...

Have fun(!)...

TTY,...

Ron

I think I should have phrased this differently. If I WANT the MGs to take over, will they and how many seasons would it take? Since I can't dig the bermuda out, why not let hte MGs have free run of what is now grass.

pweelee - Well..., if you want the MG's to take over you would have to do alot of watering because of the arid area that you are located in...the MG's that would most likely do the best are the species native to the arid areas of the US and other arid areas...

It would be a guesstimate as to exactly how long it would take for the MG's to completely naturalize in your area...maybe you'll just have to try out some different likely candidates and share the results with us here on the MG forum...

TTY,...

Ron

Jude, I just got rid of a huge section of lawn (not only the lawn, but graded up to 18" in places). I waited for the first good monsoon rain this past summer, waited a day for the ground to be workable and not mud, and started digging. It actually went fairly quickly, the real problem ended up getting rid of it :-( It can be done a lot easier than you'd think if you can wait til the next good rain or if you wanted to drench it yourself.

Trumpet vines are deciduous, green in summer and MG's are annuals in summer, unless you're gonna just grow the perennial, So what you have planned leaves your yard bare for winter?

I wouldn't recommend letting MG's have your yard for the summer, you will no doubt find other things you want to grow, but then you'll have 500,000 MG seedlings popping up everywhere. I hope you find a million other things you like as well as MG's and integrate them all together. Just take your time and find out what you like (and start planning and collecting :-)

I had a plan and had started collecting. Then I started to try the digging out of the bermuda and found I had met my match. To put it plainly, the ground kicked my behind in no time at all and I had made no real progress. I wnet at it again the next day ans so on, daily trying, and at the end of the week, there was nothing really to show for the effort, yet my body was a wreck. That was when I thought about letting the MGs have the yard and relax, pots of other things on the patio and be done with it. I had soaked the area several hours worth, let it sit for another several and then started digging. Maybe the monsoon would be a different story and I'll more than willing to wait for one to arrive.

Thanks for the input, I get discouraged realizing I'm no longer 25 and can't do all the things I used to do.

Pweelee, I have a ton of ipomoea purpurea seeds if you carry out this plan. They are hardy and vigorous. Let me know if you want me to mail them! I'll never use them all.
Beth

This message was edited Nov 1, 2006 11:00 AM

That would be wonderful Vera, I have a lot of block wall surrounding the yard and either way, the plan was to have MG and trumpet vines covering the wall.

I went out after reading posts here this morning, took a can of spray paint and marked off the area which is the most bare of bermuda. It's not really large and if azreno is right and I could dig that after a monsoon, that could be my 'other plants' area in the midst of bermuda. I figure I would have to build a barrier that the bermuda won't cross (how deep that has to be I don't know) and raised as well. It'll be full Arizona summer sun but maybe I can find things that will stand the sun which are still pretty too, no cactus or succulents.

I hate the idea of having to settle for whatever will handle the heat and sun, so few will that are pretty and fewer still with fragrance. A garden here is a challenge to say the least without shade, but I want one so badly I can almost taste it.

Jude

The area I just dug out.......the first thing in was trees, Jude. I'm going to make it reminiscent of woodland, so the trees had to go in first and start growing. I have a long way to go before that will happen, but I have full sun plants that will be planted along the block (soon to be faux rock) wall, they'll grow up and help provide cover as well. There will be arbors and trellises and branches for vines to climb of course, but also very shady areas for more tender plants once the trees grow in. A gazebo that will house vines once the canvas cover goes bad (after one year LOL, or maybe that's not funny, hmmm). Anyways, if you're planning to be there awhile, put some fast growing trees in!

The area I dug was a dead lawn, I had stopped watering it long ago because I knew I was getting rid of it, so it was literally a rock, no way no how was I going to dig in that- I didn't have a clue how I was going to get it dug out. The monsoon watered so thoroughly, a good sharp shovel helped of course, but it really was a breeze.

You'll want to go down at least 5" with edging to keep that burmuda from going under, more would be better. It'll climb over just about anything, so don't make something ugly up top to try and keep that from happening, whatever you do up top will have to be edged anyways so you may as well make it how you like.

I tried to get a pic of the area so that this isn't all abstract. The walls inside areas in the shot are facing north (with shade right now) and west (with those aloe in front of it)

1. the aloe has to go.
2. the stump is staying because I can't doa thing about it.
3. the two trees are ficus and not fast growing
4. i know the spot laid out with spray paint doesnt' show but it's the mostly barren patch in the foreground of the pic which is sort of a figure 8 laid sideways.
5. behind me is more yard which is just bermuda and I only plan vines on the west wall.
6 to my left in the pic is where the patio is with pots started but not interesting yet.

all that said, what sort of fast growing trees did you put in? How fast is fast? I really don't want shrubs in the middle of such a limited planting area so a tree would have to be well placed and provide shade almost immediately would it not?

where do I go from here?

Jude,
I'll get a bunch of seed off to you! Glad someone can use it,
Beth

If you want any seeds to a wild morning glory that grows in hot TEXAS sun without a lot of water and spreads like wild let me know. I have to pull it out of my beds about 4 times a year and manage to get enough to fill a wheelbarrel.

I'll put them to good use Vera and thank you in advance. This yard is such an eyesore, was neglected for I don't know how many years before I got here so this is good by comparison to what I started with.

Thanks again.

BTW, Fish_knees just posted today that MGs will retain their vines here in the winter and bloom again in the spring, plus put out all their new growth. IT does seem to be the thing to do.

renatelynn, that would be wonderful. The idea is to let the MGs do their own thing and take over the bermuda. If that also means I can only have 'other than MGs' in pots on the patio, so be it. I'm not up to digging caliche to create the beds on my best day

I'm in the adress exchange. What can I send to either/both of you for your trouble and assistance??

From what I can tell all you have to do is drop this seed in grass, mulch or dirt. It is growing in my front bed that has 3" of cedar mulch over the dirt. It is growing in my buffalo grass. It is growing in my veg bed! *giggle...

Jude, make sure the wild MG you are planting is not bindweed!
Beth

Jude, the one FK was talking was about the blue perennial one......not the other ones.

The trees we put in, neem and robinia, a magnolia and several cassia will be going in as well as the scarlett wisteria at a later date when they are bigger and/or we have some faux rock work finished. There have been some great trees talked about on the SW forum if you've been watching, it's a shame we don't have the search function going, you could find the conversations easily that way. I'm really just beginning and couldn't(shouldn't) really advise you on tree selection. Even though I know you can get a fast growing tree, you can't really expect shade overnight, planning a garden is a longterm thing, but you can definitely get something that will provide shade before the ficus will LOL.

I think you are where I was up until this last year, wanting to do something, but not sure what it was. You just have to visualize it and try to see what you'd like where. Try to see what heights you want where and where you want shade. Try to stop thinking about limitations your yard has and try to find ways to do what you want. For us it was trees, a lot of the planting will be done years from now when the trees give me shade, but we plant them anyways so that we do have shade,.rather than wait 10 years and decide we need shade because our yard is a furnace. For you....if you really have to have those trumpet vines, a gazebo might be more appropriate for them. Quite frankly trumpet vines are a bit much for a block wall, it's a HUGE vine that will easily be 40' and it dies back in winter. We had our wall lined with lady banks (evergreen) and even as 20' vines they were hard to contain and difficult to maintain because you can only come from the front. On a gazebo, they would have so much more room and they would be easier to maintain, and the gazebo would give you shade when it was covered in summer by the vine.

Just a few thoughts. I'm pretty new to all this. I just really think you have know what you like and what you want if you're going to be really happy with it. Know what elements you want (birdbath, bench, paths), that's a pretty good sized area in my eyes, you could do a lot with it! I used to go to the library every week and come home with new books and just go thru all the pics of gardens, it took awhile but with DH's help I became really inspired and now we have a plan. DH is thrilled, too, he can see stuff he likes in his head, but he can't take that and do anything with it :-( He's been loads of help LOL

vera,
how will I know bindweed from MGs. I have to do some research before planting I guess.

azreno
you had such wonderful ideas, a lot to digest. Yes to trees first, I just need to figure out which and where. Then, maybe I can figure out the rest. I guess I'm easily discouraged at the difficulty in digging what passes for soil here. I got spoiled in both IL and FL, although IL there was clay, just not the neglect this yard has seen. SInce I have some green, it's better than it was...... just a mass of weeds and dead looking bermuda when I took the place. Oh, and that d*mned aloe. ItI's huge and not attracctive. I was going to dig that out too, started with a shovel.. silly, went to a pick axe and got a face full of aloe juice. I was done at that point. Now I'm ready to shower it with round up or season long, then happily watch it shrivel up (I hope).

I have to run to class, then a stop at the civic center library to see what I can get there.

Thanks again to everyone for suggestions, offers of seeds

Jude

If i could see a photo of the "wild morning glory" I could tell if its bindweed. It is lovely, but just so aggressive in your area that it will choke out the other varieties of morning glories you plant,
Beth

Here is a photo of bindweed about to bloom in my area. See how long the bracts are? Morning Glory bracts are more divided and smaller.

pweelee: You have a large area to cover. I had a small area 4x6 full of grass to clear. I used a high powered sprayer nozzle and broke away the dirt, after than I just had to lift out the grass. I had mud all over myself when I got done but so much easier than digging.

I don't know about that.....was that bermuda? It'll have underground runners 6" deep and that stuff is tough as nails. Our dirt is also tough as nails :-(

our dirt isn't dirt, it's caliche (packed desert sand) more like rock than any dirt elsewhere.

I live in the desert also and have packed down sand here too but not as hard as rocks. And I thought I had it bad !

Maybe I'm overstating the caliche for the entire area. The reason mine is so hard is that this yard was neglected for some 20 years. Now I'm trying to make a garden out of it, sort of like the old story of the sows ear.....

I will succeed, somehow. I don't have a clue today how that will be managed but I've been watching another thread carefully and have decided on which tree to have planted in order to get some shade going. From there, it should improve, bit by bit.

Part of the yard is being given over to a desert tortois next spring, so I won't have to 'work' that part. That leaves two sections for me to manage and like everything else in my life, when I look at the whole big picture, sometimes it's overwhelming, but taken in bite sized chunks, I always manage.

I remind myself almost daily of what my oldest sons pediatrician told me as my eldest son approached 2. "This too shall pass" and I've made that a sort of watchword. It's gotten my through everything to date and will continue to I'm sure.

Jude

pweelee - I think azreno has the right advice for you...think it through for what your long term goals are...if you are looking for information on MG's this is the forum...
but if you need advice on how to get your wholistic environment set up so that you can enjoy plants in a way that is a bit beyond what will simply grow in a your usual native conditions...then the advice from those who have accomplished that goal in your type of area is likely to be the most productive...

The SouthWest Forum may be the forum for the general area specific setup information that you are looking for...

The MG forum is here for MG information when you want or need it...

Sounds like you've got plenty of support for you to eventually create a virtual oasis(!)...

TTY,...

Ron

Sorry for all the OT Ron :-)

One day I may get all the rules and regs straight around DG, In the meantime, I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum, it won't happen again. The subscription was worth it, even if I only read what is posted by others.

Jude

This message was edited Nov 2, 2006 8:48 AM

Hey, Pweelee, You might want to hop around the forums and sift out what you can find from as many sources as can relate to your subject morning glories,southwestern gardening etc. Personally I am all over the place reading here. There is such a wealth of information and real life stories of people`s experiences. I get a real kick out reading the gardening for wildlife forum too. I have some suggestions you might find helpful or maybe not but I`ll try.

One idea might be raised beds or large pots and another is to put in a arbor for your vines to grow on and pots or raised beds on the ends for the vines to have their soil to themselves rather than compete with grass and it will create shade since your trees grow slow. I hope this helps. :)



This message was edited Nov 3, 2006 11:17 PM

I got a package of MG seeds off to you. If you get the vines going above the grass, it might shade it enough so that it dies out eventually. Just an idea!

My thanks toyou both

pweelee - I wasn't coming from a 'rules'N' regs' point of view...I was simply ageeing with the advice that was shared with you and where you were more likely to locate the type of area specific info like azreno had shared and suggested...

All the postings here seem to be reasonably on topic...

TTY,...

Ron