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Weed barriers degrade and fail over time, and I assume that process is significantly accelerated if they're covered in gravel and driven on by a vehicle regularly. If you don't want to ever see plant life there, you either need to put down a thick enough layer of gravel or pave over it.
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May 18, 2023 19:54
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For a weed proof gravel driveway, you really do need to dig deep down, put a very thick layer of good weed blocker, and then a solid layer of sand and a deep layer of gravel to prevent weeds from coming through. You will also want to install a physical barrier (plastic, metal etc) between the gravel and the grass areas so that the soil/grass doesn't overgrow. The other issue is trees overhead. If you have trees overhead they will drop leaves, pollen, etc onto the gravel and it will eventually break down and create new "soil" over the years filling in some of the gaps in the gravel and allowing new weeds etc to grow. You really need to be on top of keeping it clean and killing any new growth in there. If you're going to go through the effort of putting in new gravel, you may as well just pave it and it will be infinitely easier to keep clean. I had a rental house with a lot of different types of rock beds (not my doing) and I will never do that again. It was difficult if not impossible to keep weeds from growing through a poorly installed rock/gravel bed. Digging the rocks out of compacted soil was a bitch to say the least and I would never dream of putting more in its place. If you do decide to dig it up, rent a skid steer or something mechanical to do the digging. Its a bitch.
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May 18, 2023 20:56
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On the other hand you just get someone to drop a 6 wheeler load of gravel there, spread it out and spot treat it with that very same bottle of roundup every few months during the summer.
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May 18, 2023 21:18
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Motronic posted:On the other hand you just get someone to drop a 6 wheeler load of gravel there, spread it out and spot treat it with that very same bottle of roundup every few months during the summer. Yeah do this for the cheap and lazy but fine method. Eventually you will mostly have no weeds except a few weed seeds blown in by the wind. I would put a barrier like some kind of edging or landscape timbers or w/e between the gravel and grass to keep each in their place and keep your mower from chucking rocks. If you want to deal with it once and for all but spend some $$$, pave it.
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May 18, 2023 21:55
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I think it looks nice when gravel driveways are lined with bricks.
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May 18, 2023 23:58
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I like gravel, it allows the ground to soak in the rain.
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May 19, 2023 12:49
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Got it, appreciate the feedback. Yeah I think if I was going to put as much effort in as Verman was suggesting, I'd probably just pave it, but for now I'm tired of spending $$$ on this house. I can get a ton of gravel delivered np, so I think I will go that route plus add some edging to make it look a little less sloppy. And then just make sure to spot treat it going forward and not let it get as overrun as I did this past year.
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May 19, 2023 13:51
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My mole trap hasn't done a drat thing. I still have a mole (or 2 or 3) in my front yard. I see new trails and holes. I move the trap to the newer trails I see, but they seem to be one and done with all these drat tunnels. They are just loving tearing it up. Between moles, birds eating seed, and getting a solid week of straight rain after I put new grass seed down...like 80% of my bare patches are still bare. I'm so loving frustrated with this ugly lawn that year after year is not getting any better despite me doing everything "right" according to everything I see/read.
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May 19, 2023 17:12
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You could also put down pre emergent after laying down the gravel. Then at the beginning of each spring re-apply, water it in (or apply right before a rain) and forget it.
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May 19, 2023 18:58
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If I was going to top dress my lawn (Zoysia) with compost after aerating, how finely should I sift it? Is 1/4" good enough? A place near me will apparently deliver compost graded to 5/16" or less and I can't imagine the last 1/16" makes much difference.
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May 19, 2023 18:59
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Better late than never, 6 yards of mulch down in a bunch of beds "designed" by a landscaper 15 years ago in the "this is gonna cost you a lot of our labor + mulch every year!" style that I hate so much and was previously guilty of when I was doing this in the 90s.  And, yes....I cheated and used black dyed mulch again because it makes the few things I have in the beds pop. It's a lame excuse/move but I just haven't had the time and energy to get into really redoing these things properly.
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May 27, 2023 00:21
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Discussion Quorum posted:If I was going to top dress my lawn (Zoysia) with compost after aerating, how finely should I sift it? Is 1/4" good enough? In my experience Zoysia does not give a gently caress, and you need to try to kill it.
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May 27, 2023 00:43
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Motronic posted:And, yes....I cheated and used black dyed mulch again because it makes the few things I have in the beds pop. It's a lame excuse/move but I just haven't had the time and energy to get into really redoing these things properly. Why is black dyed mulch “cheating”? I like it because it makes things pop.
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May 29, 2023 11:11
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devicenull posted:In my experience Zoysia does not give a gently caress, and you need to try to kill it. Ha ha ha the prior residents here accepted this challenge. I fertilized for the first time in probably years and some of the bald spots are starting to fill in at least but there are still so many weeds even after 2 applications of three-way herbicide (although in hindsight my first one was too early) Anyways it's less about that and more about not having wood chips making GBS threads up my lawn Whole thing is on hold though because I was going to aerate first and the tines of my Corona hand aerator immediately clog with clay that requires a mallet and dowel to extract. Maybe I'll rent a powered aerator or just pay someone to do it.
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May 29, 2023 13:45
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Motronic posted:Native wildflower seed mix is in. Got a quick thunderstorm after broadcast seeding, then I was able to get out there and roll it then I covered it with straw. No real significant rain but the rye is up and healthy. Maybe the wildflowers? Not even really sure what is what in here. But things are happening at least.   At least I know my spreading method was very consistent. Need rain. Lots of it. In small increments.
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Jun 11, 2023 00:44
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KKKLIP ART posted:So I have this area along the side of my house about, a screened porch, 20-25 feet long with a bit of an incline going down (maybe 1.5 feet over the course of the side of the porch). it currently has a totally unkempt spot that I want to add some stone edging until it butts up against my fence. How hard is something like this to do: From a ways back but I played around with dry stacking at our house that we bought in late 2019. I found thestonetrust.org was enormously helpful. Some real basic ideas (2 on 1, 1 on 2 to avoid running seams and proper batter), were not intuitive at the outset. It takes A LOT of rocks for not much wall, i think it was something like 1 ton for 2cuft of finished wall. Here in the middle of suburban PNW i found the most economical approach (if your site has the access) was a mini dump truck which held 5-7 tons at about $1200 a load, for basic 1/2 to 1 man size irregular basalt. I was humbled fairly quickly by the process until i stepped back and approached the projects from the stand point of a skill that needed to be learned and not just hur dur big rocks on bottom small ones on top how hard can it be? (Not accusing you of taking that tack.) I built an informal retaining wall about 30' long and 3' high at the tallest point to create a hill and begun (the rock budget ran out, see cost and amount needed above) a more formal but still irregular free standing wall. If i get around to posting a picture you will laugh at how pitifully small it is. Much of my rock delivery actually went to lining my perimeter borders but that was mostly single layer rocks on dirt to give me something to pile 6"of mulch behind. If I may pose some other advice as an amateur, dump the stone as close to where your walls will go at the outset, but leave a couple feet of clear space to work in between your footing and piles. Spend the time to sort the stone by size. A heavy duty hand truck is extremely useful in moving 1 man stones, usually up to 200lbs or so. I didn't see the need to break or shape my stones with a hammer, relish in the process of selecting the right stone for the right place. Or do whatever, I definitely think regular shaped stones would have been easier to work with in that regard.
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Jun 19, 2023 02:26
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Looking for some advice on rain water management. We live in costal southern California and are presently replacing the lawn/weeds combo that was our yard with hard scape and local low water use plants. The goal here is to get the CA state rebate for doing so, which should offset nearly the whole materials cost of this project. In order to qualify for the rebate, we must also install gutters (desperately needed anyway) plus rain water collection. I’ve got a plan for this, but the overflow drainage is tricky for one of the three zones here (the other two are easy to run overflow out to the street). There is no easy way to get the overflow from the garage side out to the street or into the sewer without tearing up a bunch of concrete. Is there a diy method to send this overflow out to the back yard away from the foundation and distribute it over a large area there? Something like a French drain I guess but I don’t want it all dumping at one point. The lot is pretty flat also, no natural slopes helping with drainage here. There’s up to maybe 100m2 of yard space to disperse it if I can get the water there in the first place
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Jun 19, 2023 21:55
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You need to be a little more specific about your problem with maybe a diagram to give a good solution. A gutter that empties into even a half-assed diy rain garden section may be good enough. Does the state have specific requirements for the system?
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Jun 20, 2023 18:18
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My understanding is that the state requirement is to just have some kind of rain capture system, so one barrel per section of gutters is acceptable. The issue is what to do with the excess once the barrel fills up. Here's a bad Paint diagram. House and garage outlined in red, thin red lines indicate where roof peaks so you get an idea of drainage to the gutters (blue lines) and rain barrels (blue circles). The rain barrel on the right side is the one I'm talking about. The gray in the bottom right is all concrete and pretty flat, so there's not an obvious way to drain excess from that barrel to the street. And I don't want to dump it directly into the planter next to it, because that's still pretty close to the house and the fence. I'd rather redirect that excess to the greenery in the back, near the top section of the image. 
bawfuls fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jun 20, 2023 |
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Jun 20, 2023 18:35
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bawfuls posted:My understanding is that the state requirement is to just have some kind of rain capture system, so one barrel per section of gutters is acceptable. The issue is what to do with the excess once the barrel fills up. Run a soaker hose off it.
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Jun 20, 2023 18:55
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I like the simplicity of running a soaker hose, I guess the only question is if rain barrel overflow is enough pressure for that. Pulling from the bottom of a 55 gallon barrel that'd be only a bit over 1 PSI, even if I got creative and used the full height from the gutter to the ground that's only gonna be ~3 PSI. Looks like recommended pressure for soaker hoses is more like 20-25 PSI, which google says will put out 224 gallons per hour, or 54 gal/hr at 10 PSI. If I assume the flow rate scales with the square of the pressure as that looks to do, then at the max recommended 250ft of soaker hose I could dump 8-28 gallons per hour with 1-3 PSI. That corresponds to about 0.1 inches per hour of rain at most, a rate that we can certainly exceed here. Maybe I can do something clever with a pump in the barrel and an overflow switch that would also be used for on-demand watering from the barrel, but now we're into not-so-simple methods. edit: this site has soaker hoses specifically for gravity fed rain barrels, so maybe it's nbd at low pressure https://www.soakerhosedepot.com/Rain-Barrel-Soaker-Hose-38_c_107.html I probably need to route the hose NOT into the plant beds though, since that would tend to over water them during rain. So maybe in a shallow rock-lined trench that is then buried? Or is this a dumb concern and I should assume the soil around here can handle the extra water? bawfuls fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jun 20, 2023 |
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Jun 20, 2023 20:44
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bawfuls posted:I like the simplicity of running a soaker hose, I guess the only question is if rain barrel overflow is enough pressure for that. Pulling from the bottom of a 55 gallon barrel that'd be only a bit over 1 PSI, even if I got creative and used the full height from the gutter to the ground that's only gonna be ~3 PSI. You keep the valve closed when it’s raining, open it when it’s dry and the barrel is full.
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Jun 20, 2023 22:13
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Maybe my question wasn’t clear. I need to route the overflow from the barrel during rain events. The typical solution here is to have a pipe near the top of the barrel which goes into the street/sewer or just on the ground near by. But space near this barrel is confined so I don’t want to dump overflow right next to it, and it’s not feasible to dump into the street. This barrel will collect runoff from about 40m2 of roof area. That is over 200 gallons per inch of rainfall, so the excess must be passively routed somewhere away from the house foundation. Edit: something like this, view of the barrel from the side  White is the barrel, blue is external piping which routes to soaker hose at bottom right. Red is a manual valve. Install with downspout feed sealed to top of the barrel, close valve. It rains and fills up the barrel. Once the water level is above the top blue pipe, excess spills out into the soaker system. When it stops raining, barrel is full and you can later open the valve to empty it via soaker system. But this assumes sending excess rainwater to the plants while it’s already raining won’t over saturate the soil. Otherwise I need to put the water somewhere else. bawfuls fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jun 20, 2023 |
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Jun 20, 2023 22:24
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bawfuls posted:Maybe my question wasn’t clear. I need to route the overflow from the barrel during rain events. The typical solution here is to have a pipe near the top of the barrel which goes into the street/sewer or just on the ground near by. But space near this barrel is confined so I don’t want to dump overflow right next to it, and it’s not feasible to dump into the street. Why can't it drain onto your driveway?
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Jun 20, 2023 22:44
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Cause the driveway doesn’t slope very well to begin with and we already get some water ingress under the garage door during heavy rain. I don’t want to add to that. Edit: maybe this is an overblown concern and it’d be fine idk bawfuls fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jun 21, 2023 |
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Jun 20, 2023 22:46
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bawfuls posted:But this assumes sending excess rainwater to the plants while it’s already raining won’t over saturate the soil. Otherwise I need to put the water somewhere else. This concern is overblown in the sense that your plants will be fine. They can take a few hours being flooded no problem while the storm water soaks into the soil. I’m assuming SoCal soil is something sandyish and you get infrequent storm events. You might get away with a gutter into the yard if you site it correctly, draining it onto some rocks rather than dirt. That’s what I meant by half-assed rain garden. Try it out, otherwise you’ll have to dig a trench or catchbasin
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Jun 21, 2023 02:57
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Yeah the soil here is quite sandy and we average like 2 inches of rain per month only in the winter. The trouble is with climate change and winters like this past one, plus El Niño events, we can get extended days of rain at times. (Along with even worse droughts of course) Maybe that’s not something I can really plan for? Just distribute the water over a large area with a soaker hose and take things as they come.
bawfuls fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Jun 21, 2023 |
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Jun 21, 2023 04:43
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Six months ago I had these five large logs (16-20"+ diameter, 10'+ long) dropped off in my driveway. They have just been sitting there, I thought it was going to be a failed project, I bit off more than I could chew. I have the Ego 18" Chainsaw, and wow, its easier than I expected to cut through these. I highly recommend this chainsaw if you are looking for a battery powered solution.   No more buying firewood this year! Now I'm thinking about renting one of those hydraulic wood splitters. Anyone have suggestions? Just rent whatever from home depot?
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Jun 23, 2023 20:18
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Six months ago I had these five large logs (16-20"+ diameter, 10'+ long) dropped off in my driveway. They have just been sitting there, I thought it was going to be a failed project, I bit off more than I could chew. I have the Ego 18" Chainsaw, and wow, its easier than I expected to cut through these. I highly recommend this chainsaw if you are looking for a battery powered solution. Let’s go firewood!! I just borrowed my neighbors 27-ton gas powered hydraulic log splitter today and split a ton of wood I’d had around. Takes forever to unstack, split, and restack but after four hours it was loving done. I’m never cutting firewood again. 
nwin fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jun 23, 2023 |
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Jun 23, 2023 20:38
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nwin posted:Let’s go firewood!! You will, because it'll all turn to dust before you can use it. Sorry, not sorry. voice of experience
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Jun 23, 2023 20:44
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This is why people had children.
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Jun 23, 2023 20:45
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Darchangel posted:You will, because it'll all turn to dust before you can use it. That’s fine. We have no use for this other than the fire pit put back and our backyard is a forest with multiple fallen trees so we’ve just been cleaning it up. My neighbor has a wood stove and actually uses this stuff but he has a huge surplus and doesn’t need ours.
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Jun 23, 2023 20:49
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nwin posted:Let’s go firewood!! Nice! My wife wanted me to buy a cord and a half from a local guy who sells firewood for $325. But I was determined to do it for free. I can't wait until this is done. 
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Jun 23, 2023 22:34
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nwin posted:Let’s go firewood!! I have multiple firewood stoves (masonry heater + sauna) and I make about 1/3 more than that every year with chainsaw and axe. Firewood cutting and splitting is fun though, it's a real work that leaves me with a sense of achievement, I've done something actually useful for once.
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Jun 26, 2023 03:10
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So I've got to get someone to do some tree work on our yard. Had one guy out and give us a quote for removal of 2 trees (one is diseased and the other is just kinda old and hosed up), and trimming an oak tree and a honey locust. The guy seemed pretty knowledgeable, but he also called my oak tree a red oak, when I'm pretty sure it's a pin oak (at the very least not a red oak). Is that like a red flag? He went and stared at the tree for a while to get a quote so it's not like a driveby quote or anything.
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Jun 26, 2023 19:09
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There are several broad classes of oak trees. Pin oaks fall under red oaks. It's just an easy way to ID them on the fly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_subg._Quercus#Section_Lobatae Fitzy Fitz fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jun 26, 2023 |
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Jun 26, 2023 21:56
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Ok thanks, I kinda figured the guy would know but that threw me for a bit of a loop. Edit: oh I was shortening the Northern red oak to just red oak in my head. Eeyo fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Jun 26, 2023 |
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Jun 26, 2023 22:19
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Red oaks have pointy leaves, white oaks have rounded leaves is the very easy, mostly accurate way to quickly distinguish them.
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Jun 27, 2023 01:43
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White oaks grow like this... But Black oaks grow like this!
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Jun 27, 2023 06:38
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Fozzy The Bear posted:White oaks grow like this... But black oaks are actually red oaks!!
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Jun 27, 2023 15:49
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