That was quick! All your hard work is going to look wonderful when all those seeds come to life. I, too, am enjoying watching this all come together.
Here's a little update on the back yard. Right now I'm working on the patio area. When we built the house we purposefully left out the patio slab so we could do our own. 3 years later... The yard slopes away from the house so step one was building a retaining wall:
Today a coworker and I took lunch to divide and replant some Irises in a bed on our company property. We also got permission to nab a few for ourselves. We divided closed to 100 and took 26 apiece. I planted them all tonight (pictures of the planting later). My question for now is, since I spaces the irises 20" apart, what have you all planted between irises?
I don't think I would plant anything between them as they will need the room to spread. At least with my iris, they are already taking up at least 18 to 24 inches by the time they are blooming nicely. Are you going to plant other flowers in front of them?
Here's a picture of one spot I planted them. There's another on the other side of the yard. I have so much bed space too fill that I'll leave them till spring and the take some away.
Irises will spread and fill in. I'd also not plant anything in between them... unless you want to just go with some annuals for color right now.
You have been very busy and it will bring a big payoff of a beautiful yard...we used garden blend when we made our large beds too...good stuff. I can't wait to see the pictures when everything is growing and beautiful
I can't believe how hard and fast you've worked on your yard and I really like the shape of the patio your building too. I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures also.
Wow Jon that does look great. The only problem I found when growing things from seed is-when the plants start to grow I never know what is a weed and what is the plant I want to leave growing. We also live in an area with red clay soil. We have been amending our soil for the last 4 years with top soil, sand, fine gravel and mulched leaves in the fall. It is finally getting to a very nice planting consistency. One thing I was concerned about with your plans was that you had said you where going to amend the soil in the holes before you planted some of the perennials. I would caution you to not do that, but to mix some of the good soil with the clay. If you just put the good soil in the planting hole. The plants roots will grow ok for a while. But once the roots hits the hard clay soil around it. The roots will not try and grow into it, as it has the nice loose soil to grow in. The roots will continue to grow in a circle and eventually kill itself. I think my thinking is correct along those lines. But if you are just doing seeds you should have no problem.
