Goodbye Fescue

Glass bottle edging sparkles in the sunshine of a beautiful afternoon. I was home to early to call it quits on a day like this. Surely there is some gardening I can do. Planting had been done in this bed long before it was defined with bottle edging and a short dry stack stone wall and the planting had been done right into the wild things. Most of the wild was unmowed fescue grass that had been seeded on a bare dirt slope to keep it in place during the long years of construction.



Today was a fine time to say goodbye to the fescue and continue on with the transformation of this into a proper garden bed. The fescue had done its job. Now it was time to go. The grass clumps were dug, the soil knocked out and the grass was left on the slope placed upside down.

The grading and earth moving done for the building left me with a good deal of nutrient poor saprolite subsoil on top. I was not about to haul away free organic matter like clumps of grass that will decompose and feed the soil. This method of things basically amounts to hand plowing.

It's a slow approach that is for sure. More weeding will be involved until I can cover it with a thick layer of woodchip mulch. But that's okay, I have plenty of time. It will be a proper garden bed one day.



Then I attacked a patch of Thimbleberry, Rubus odoratus on the lower part of the slope and cut it back by half. It's a fairly attractive native shrub that likes to sucker into large colonies taking more room than I want to give it. It hard to see the bare stems in this picture. It's just to the left and above the skinny logs I unburied. I unearthed another pile of rocks too. I think there is a small heiau in Ku'ulei 'Aina's future. There is an endless supply of rocks.



There are a lot more clumps of fescue grass that need to be turned upside down on the slopes below Hale Mana and in the sunny utility valley. I will have my work cut out for me as the garden to be takes form.



I try to edit mechanically as much as I can. In a proper garden that is a pretty easy thing to do. As I attempt to gain the upper hand over the Lush that will engulf me in the blink of an eye come June, I may resort to some herbicides. There are some real thugs growing out there. The time to say goodbye to them draws near.

I want my wild things organized. It will be much easier to do without a select group of the truly unmanageable.