Greg In The Desert

I have been threatening to trim back and cut down the trees in my yard (mostly cut down) for several years. It’s already starting to cool down and I decided to get on it before it’s too late. It’s only been a threat because I wanted to rent a chipper but chippers are expensive and I finally gave up on that idea and started cutting things down and putting the waste in the back part of my lot. Out of sight and out of mind.

The big project was cutting down a large branch on what I think is a Elm tree. This kind of tree can be seen throughout older neighborhoods of Rio Rancho and Albuquerque and they all seem to have the same problem, whole limbs off the main truck just die off.

On my tree, the main limb that hangs over the patio died off. The dead limb with all its sub branches make for great bird perches in which the birds then crap all over my patio. It also makes a mess with twigs all over the place as the whole thing slowly breaks up.

The plan was to cut off the main branch without it falling onto the house. I did the cutting with a reciprocating saw and a 9″ pruning blade and a friend pulled on the branch with a rope so it would fall away from the house.

It didn’t quite go as planned (and I should have had video). I wasn’t able to tie the limb high enough and pulling it with the rope wasn’t effective at moving it away from the house fast enough. The top of the limb partially hit the roof and the glass table. Luckily the limb and branches were dead and dried up and they broke apart when they hit the roof and patio furniture.

I cut up the Elm branch into small pieces and they will be used as firewood this winter. The rest of the trees that I cut down will sit in the backyard and allowed to dry out. Most of it is from pine based trees, so they are not suitable for burning inside but may see use in the outdoor fire pit.

Several years ago there was a huge fire in the bosque near the Rio Grande in Albuquerque. After the fire they cleared the trees and I have some of the wood from project. The wood was far away from the house, too much of a pain to access during the winter. I moved all of that wood near the house and cut up the larger pieces with the reciprocating saw, some if still needs splitting but it should be plenty for this winter.

I exclusively used my Dewalt reciprocating saw
for all this cutting and it amazes me how well a refurbished tool that I bought over 12 years ago works like it’s brand new. I was able to fully test out the Dewalt DC9180 18 Volt Nano Tech lithium ion battery pack and it performed exactly as advertised. It provided full power thought multiple cuts until it just stopped. It wasn’t as fast as a chain saw would have been but it did cut through everything I asked with constant power including a few logs larger than the 9 inch blade. I would guess I could get about 6 to 8 cuts between charges and it would charge in about 30 minutes, which provided breaks for me.

There are still some larger logs that I may try to cut with a small chainsaw if I can find one to borrow.

Of course my cat Saturn was happy to supervise the project from the bedroom window making occasional recommendations.

In Mid April I started a Solarization experiment where I use solar heating to kill off everything in the soil of my back yard. So far the results have been mixed.

The weather in Rio Rancho has cycled between days of heat and days of cool with rain. The cool days help to create a greenhouse effect under the plastic that cause plants to grow and the days of heat have killed them off. This is good since it’s easier to kill plants than seeds. Hopefully everything that can sprout has sprouted and died.

Since we haven’t had enough days of heat in a row, I don’t think the ground has really baked deep into the soil. It doesn’t appear it has baked the surface enough to decompose organic matter there.

The cycle of rain and heat appear to be over and we are now we are just getting heat. Parts of dead vegetation with sharp edges along with the prolonged time in the heat has caused some of the plastic to break down and break apart. Of the two sheets I put down one has almost completely broken down. The other sheet of plastic is partly shaded and has held together, it is currently experiencing a greenhouse effect with some plants growing underneath.

All the early summer rain has caused a large amount of goat heads plants (Tribulus terrestris) to sprout outside of the solarization area. I did my best to pick the plants but I had to violate my rule of not using chemicals and apply Roundup to a most of the back yard. My concern with using Roundup is the potential of creating weeds that are resistant to Roundup. Also, Roundup is turning out to be toxic.

This will be one of the few times I used chemicals to control weeds. Depending on how much time I have for the rest of this summer, I will try to apply more plastic to the backyard to take advantage of the late summer heat.

HGTV’s Gardening By The Yard with Paul James will be showing an episode filmed at Sandoval County’s Waterwise Garden in Rio Rancho. The episode number is GBY-1807 and is entitled “Xeriscaping, Drought-Tolerant Plants, Wise Water Practices“. It will be shown in New Mexico on HGTV which airs Sunday June 7th at 5:30am.

Gardening By The Yard is one of my favorite gardening shows and it’s too bad I didn’t know they were here filming. I will add video of the episode here if it becomes available.

A few days ago I wrote about Google using goats to control grass on their property. Techcrunch didn’t seem impressed and was worried about the jobless human mowers.

The city of Mesa, Arizona has used 70 goats for the last 50 months to clear vegetation around a water reclamation plant. They expect to save $10,000 by using goats.

Besides being cost effective, it reduces the use of fossil fuels, toxic chemicals and pesticides. It’s a pollution-free way of ridding the three retention ponds of compromising vegetation, Satter said.

Goats’ bodies break down plants in such a way that they won’t grow back when it becomes waste, making the job more permanent than what a machine can do.

It’s not mentioned how many people it took to mow the grass with machines vs. taking care of goats. I suspect goats are more labor intensive that mowers.

Google is mowing their large areas of vegetation with goats. This is a great idea, something I may investigate when I get the grass growing in the back yard.

At our Mountain View headquarters, we have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we’ve rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we’re not “kidding”). A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.

With summer approaching, it’s time to start focusing on outdoor projects and leave the indoor projects for the winter. Even if the weather doesn’t want to cooperate. The previous owners of my house had a section of the back yard, about 1500 square feet, sectioned off to grow grass including an underground sprinkler system. When I moved in to the house it had been unoccupied for a while and the weeds had taken over. I tried growing grass where it used to grow but haven’t had success.

The problem, the low water grass (buffalo grass, blue gamma, etc) I’ve tried growing can’t compete with the weeds. I refuse to use chemicals to kill the weeds and I’ve tried manually cutting down the weeds down and pulling them out but it hasn’t been effective enough (especially against the dreaded goat heads aka Tribulus terrestris).

I’ve discovered a chemical free method of eliminating weeds on a large scale called solarization. It uses transparent plastic directly on the ground to bake the soil and will kill seeds. It’s possible to cook the soil 6 inches deep and at 125 degrees ore more. The University of Arizona has a good article on the process for use in Tucson (also see Wayne Schmidt’s Solarization Page) and should adapt to New Mexico.

The timing for installing the plastic is good right now, it has just rained giving the ground a good soaking and the spring winds died off long enough to install the plastic. My first try was using 108 square feet of 1 mil painters drip cloth. The thinner the plastic the better the sun penetrates but 1 mill is too thin for this application. Even though I had cut down the weeds even a little bit of plant materials was able to puncture the plastic. Smaller sections of plastic are harder to manage than larger sheets.

I was able to find 500 square feet 4 mil plastic sheets at the local WalMart (as much as it pained me to have to enter the place). It wasn’t cheap at a cost of $20 per roll. I could have probably put a ad on craigslist and found some plastic sheeting for free but I have a limited window to install it.

The installation of the plastic went well. I used bricks to hold the plastic down while I laid it out. I then dug a trench around the perimeter and used the dirt to seal the edges. I used two sheets and overlapped them about 6 inches using bricks and landscape staples. It’s important that air cannot get under the plastic sheeting so the moisture and heat stays under the plastic.

I’m not planning on growing grass in the entire area where grass originally grew, only about 1000 square feet so two sheets should be sufficient. Since I will be out of town for most of the summer the ground should be well cooked by time I get back. I will try to make regular soil temperature readings during the summer.

For the last month the weather has been mostly sunny and warm on the days I work and either windy, cold or rainy or all of the above on the days I’m off. I had a some sun and little wind yesterday but today it snowed.

Were not getting anything like Denver’s projected 20 inches of show. The lack of cooperation by the weather isn’t helping because I have a number of outdoor things to do around the house before I potentially go out of town for three months starting in May.

Why not just walk? It’s has to be a joke. Via Obsessionfitness .

The temperature has been in the 60’s and 70’s in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque this last week. I decided to stop work on the master bathroom project and foucus on outdoor projects why the weather is good. There’s a good chance I will be sent out of town in spring and early summer so I won’t get a lot of chance work on the outdoor projects until fall.

There’s a structure in on my front porch under my front window, the best I can think to call it is a flower box or a raised planting bed. It’s about 8 feet long and two feet wide and a permanent structure made of brick.

The previous owners had something growing in it. I’m not sure what it was as there is no signs of life in it and it’s filled with potting soil. The only thing that it has really been used for is a litter box for the neighborhood cats.

This area of the front of my house is ugly and I get disgusted to look at it every day I walk by it. I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to do with this area for a while, I considered tearing it out and concreting the whole area but that’s going to be just as ugly as the mess that is already there. I decided to make it into a desert rock garden with a few low water usage native plants. This will also be the prototype for what the rest of the front yard will look like.

I’m using low water usage desert plants in the yard which generally like sandy soil. I removed about 6 inches of potting soil (and cat crap) from the raised bed and replaced it with sandy New Mexico dirt from the backyard. I didn’t worry too much about the dirt being clean and I doubt the plants will care.

Of of my goals with this project is try and reuse materials I already have. I searched my property for volunteer plants that have sprouted up around the yard. I found two different types of Yucca in the yard (yucca is the state flower of New Mexico). Yucca is a rhizome and from what I have read, appear to be pretty forgiving when removing from the ground.

There was one kind of Yucca in the very front of my property near the road. It was challenge digging these two plants up because of the spikes on the end of their leaves.

Further up my property there are several more mature Yucca plants of a different variety. They had some smaller plants sprouting near them. The smaller plants were much easier to dig up. I actually don’t know exactly what kind of Yucca varieties any of these plants are.

I was dissapointed that I didn’t find any cacutus anywhere on my property. I ended up buying a small barrel cactus from Lowes for about $10. In retrospect, it was probably easier to buy the cactus and transplant it from the panter rather than dig it up. Getting it out of the planter was difficult enough by itself. Each of the Yucca plants would have probably cost about $10 each, so I saved about $40 in plantings.

I found some small bunches of what I believe is buffalo grass on the south side of my property. They have been growing there for several years but I have a feeling they won’t survive due to the lack of a full day’s sun at the front of my house.

The material I have in the most abundance is rock. It’s unfortunately the kind of rock I would rather not have. It’s small, less than 1 inch, round and grey river rock. The original landscapers were in love with this stuff. It’s everywhere, in the front yard, in the backyard and on the side yard.

The side yard has a thick layer of the round river rock and this is where I access my back yard with a vehicle. Driving on round river rock is very much like driving on marbles. A better choice would be to use the angular aggregate and if I was starting over I would use decomposed granite. In any case I’m stuck with this stuff so I will try to reuse as much of it as I can and make it look nice.

There’s also a small amount of dark red volcanic rock aggregate, which is native to New Mexico, and larger boulders in the yard. I used both the river rock and the volcanic in the raised bed.

This is my first attempt at desert landscaping and I think the results came out good. You can view all the photos of front porch landscaping project on Flickr.

The next project will be to do something about the ugly 1970’s white rock that borders the raised bed.

Purple Sage Garden Centers is a locally owned garden center that I preferred over big box stores. There was one located in Rio Rancho not far from my house which made it even better.

It’s sad to hear that they are going out of business. Oh, and that bank bailout?

Briones said borrowing money to get through the recession wasn’t a viable option. No one is lending, he said.

“You have to be stellar and not need it and then, maybe, they’ll look at you,” he said.

Yeah, that bailout was a big help.