Quote:
Originally Posted by mikephoen
I’m interested in this clover idea. Can it choke out dandelions? Or do I need to do something about them first?
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I think you need to pull them out, but if you sprinkle seeds after, you might not have to pull the whole root out as it'll make it hard for the dandelion to come back? I'm in a similar situation and I'm thinking about the clover idea as well.
I have a few dead patches of grass because hares keep showing up and wrecking it. Traditional grass and sod is too fragile so I have this huge crescent moon shaped flattened dead spot front and centre on my lawn. I think the clover can take in that area pretty quickly and I'm thinking to spread more on the rest of the lawn to make it look more consistent. I also have a few random dead spots from the spruce tree, so I hope that the clover can help with that slightly as well.
Dammit, I think I'm going to go all in with some landscaping gear grinders. Half gear grinder and half landscaping post...
I'm looking into a few uncommon shrubs and vines to replace spruce trees and aspect that are growing too close to my house with roots that are potentially damaging the foundation or weeping tile, or branches that whack my house loudly when the wind blows. I'm looking into wolf willow, and/or clematis and hops via a trellis/arbor. If the clematis vine or the wolf willow turn out great, I might take out an extra privacy tree and convert it to that instead. Wolf willow apparently is very aggressive, but I can't imagine it's worse than aspen and the choke cherry I have.
I'm going to clover my lawns to address constant ugly dead patches from animals and just weird spots of death on my lawn. I also wonder if it'll do better than the grass due to the soil acidity from spruce trees.
I'm going to get some native wildflower mix and just dump that #### into the flower bed so it's not all basic brown soil and scythe that #### down to control it if necessary. The plants will look nice, I don't have to do much maintenance on it and hopefully I don't have to water it as much.
I'm going to rip out a ton of the mulch and stones and plant the #### out of the base of my spruce trees because it's pissing me off when I run over #### with the lawn mower and cleaning mulch and stones before mowing is getting annoying. I'm thinking bleeding hearts, poppies and peonies.
Ants are getting into my house and I've spent too much on trying to nuke them and seal my home to prevent them but they always return... I just realized that there's like 5-6 plants from the previous owners that are ultra loved by ants and other insects. I'm going to rip them out so they don't attract insects and transplanting them to the edge of my property if they survive. Then replace them with stuff that bugs dislike. Bugleweed looks like something that will work fine and it seems it should do fine fighting lilac suckers for space.
I poked around into a few things, it might take a year or two for some of them to take, and maybe 2-3 years before they reach the point I am happy with their size and durability... but I think I can do this for around $500-1000 and maybe 10-30 hours worth of elbow grease this summer and autumn. I think it'll be worth it and it'll be relatively low maintenance. I love planting stuff I can just plant and enjoy later on with only minor trimming later on. Not a huge fan of regular maintenance on plants.