Worms to the Rescue!

Our yard is a disaster.  Remember a few months ago we planted a bunch of new things in hopes up making our yard a happier place to be?  Let’s take a look:

So young and promising… full of hope for their bright futures…

Now they are dead. Dead as door nails.R.I.P. trees… we will miss you.

After going through the heartbreak of losing yet another round of planted love, we came to the conclusion that its isn’t the way we take care of them (because we do! and well!)… it is the terrible quality of the soil.  Literally it is hard-packed sand/dust that blows around in the wind.  That doesn’t scream healthy to me…

So how does one go about improving soil quality?  The answer: worms.Apparently these little guys are called “the gardener’s unpaid handyman.”  First of all, they tunnel through the top 12″ of your soil, aerating it and leaving room for plant roots to grow more freely.  No more hard-packed soil!  Secondly, (and bear with me here… I’m about to get a little gross) earthworm waste contains five times more nitrogen, seven times more phosphorus, eleven times more potassium, and 1,000 times more good bacteria than the material it consumed.  So worms make the quality of the soil better as well as the structure.  You may think I know a lot about worms but really all I did was read the back of the worm container! :)Anyway, now that we have gotten a little down and dirty, let’s move forward.  Once Walker came up with the brilliant idea to use worms to help our soil (he’s so smart!) and I read the back of the worm can to figure out what the heck he was talking about, we followed the instructions to give the little worms a new home in our yard.

Prior to placing the worms, we roughed up the top couple inches of bare soil.  Then, once the worms were settled, we mixed the top layer of dead, miserable soil with some healthy, happy soil.  Then we spread some more grass seed over the bare areas and watered thoroughly with our new sprinkler.

Sad, but this is the improved “after” picture…

We have been good about watering twice a day (morning and evening) and are hoping that the worms, healthy soil, and new grass (please?) will help improve our soil. It is also nice that the weather has cooled down a bit here to a gorgeous 80 degrees or less because our new grass actually stands a chance!

On a side note, the reason the other half of our yard has out of control, tall grass is due to two things: 1. laziness and 2. the last time we cut the grass, we ended up with half of it dead and now we are trying to re-grow it. So we need to trim it but not too much.  It is the one thing that is surviving in our soil!

We do, however, have a few container plants that are flourishing in their store-bought healthy soil and two of them were displaced from their usual homes when we brought in the new side table and Adirondack chairs this weekend.  But not to worry, they found new homes!  Clifford has taken the sunny corner where the lime tree used to live die slowly and the succulent crate has snuggled in next to the grape plant!  We actually used two patio pavers to raise the crate off of the soil for drainage reasons but you can’t see them because of the grass.So there is a little life back there but keep your fingers crossed for our backyard’s healthy recovery!