Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Front yard progress and hops

I made some progress with the front yard - finally getting the steps together with some stacked sandstone.  It took some time - mostly making sure I got all the worms out of the fill dirt.  Of course that means that most of the fill was probably worm casings - not exactly class 2 baserock.  Since I sometimes specify cement treated base, I thought this would be an opportunity to see how it could work for my poor backfill material.  I mixed a sack of cement with the soil as I was backfilling.  I think it will actually work out pretty well.  Otherwise, the stone is just drystacked - no mortar bedding or grouting or anything.  This should make it easy to reconfigure if we change our minds down the road.  Next up will be finishing the edging (which we had a different idea for) and planting.

The hops I planted in a nearby pot are starting to take off.  I'm sure the pot is too small for all three (Fuggle, Goldings, and Cascades - in that order the fuggles is the quickest growing bine).  Maybe next year when they are bigger, I will repot in 3 separate pots.  Now I just need to make some cages so the deer don't start nibbling on them, and run some string to the eaves.