#Thegreatpoolpondconversion - 200621
In conjunction with the pond, we’ve been working on landscaping the adjoining field.
It’s a half acre of very dense, unmowed grass and wildflowers/weeds, about 2 feet high.
We decided to map out a few small plots where we’d plant some stuff deliberately.
We were going to mow each one down, then hoe up the roots/turn the soil etc in very small bite sized stages.
Well, we tried. This is St. Augustine grass, it has shoots and runners and it fights back.
There was just no way; certainly not in the summer.
So we figured we’d rent a rototiller, which, of course morphed into “rottweiler.”
Which is also better than a third week’s work entitled something with ‘border’ in it.
We needed to turn 6 plots, about 1600 square feet total. Three will be for wildflowers, and three for some specific trees and plantings.
Last week we mowed down the high grass. Then we went over it with the lowest mower setting to get as close to the dirt as we could.
Rented the Mantis XP from home depot on saturday.
Quiet, easy to start, and we began chewing.
It’s an odd little device. As the wheels and teeth spin forward and the machine wants to move forward, you actually pull the thing backwards. There was still plenty of grass and runners so it kept clogging. It’s a good thing we mowed down what we did.
Eventually we tied a rope to it and one of us pulled on the handles while the other dragged it. We were like a team of oxen plowing the north 40.
A three hour work out leaving us with jellied arms turned out still to be much faster than we thought it would take.
We created some pretty good dirt beds and both realized immediately that we never have to do this again.
Sunday we finished the first one foot width of the border with last weeks rocks already in place.
Then we started washing and barrowing and managed to do about half of the second pass around to make the whole thing about 2 feet wide.
You can see that all the liner and the darker deck paint is totally covered over now where we finished.
Recall the entire deck will be painted gray. We painted the gray strip so we wouldnt slop paint on the rocks trying to do it later.
When we pumped out the bottom on Saturday we noticed that some creatures are already taking up residence in the small amount of water under the pebble bottom. and there’s a good amount of algae growing as well. The word’s gone out and we’re not even open for business yet.
This is what we think the finished project will look like:
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