A couple of days later I drove by and they were finished. Finished? They were too finished.

One of my most common problems I have to correct is too much soil in planting beds. We all have seen planting areas with scallop edging along the sidewalk to keep the soil back. What happened is there was just too much soil in the bed and when it isd watered it runs out!

Why does it keep happening? Beats me. In case like the one I saw the other day 20 yards of soil was brought in at a cost of probably $1,000 by the time the soil was spread.

If it was necessary or even helpful on a commercial project like I saw, it probably is not a problem. Here though it is going to create a problem with just too much water in the parking lot and on the sidewalk

I personally like at least a 2" space between the soil and sidewalk and I would prefer 4".

What this does is provide a lip to hold the water and provide a lip that allows you to mulch. Mulching can do a lot to improve plant health.

If you have a planting bed that you think needs more soil look and measure. If it in fact does need 2 6" of soil I prefer to add humus and mix in in to the existing soil to improve the texture. If I need more than 6 " I will add hum,us and soil and mix them both in.

In any case keep the soil below any edging or walkways.

You can see why its called a "pea" eggplant. I guess that is to be expected. What I didn't expect is the size of this thing. It grew and grew and grew with not a sign of a flower. It was over seven feet tall at the first sign of a flower bud.

I have to say that there are at least one hundred eggplant fruits on the plant. Unfortunately none are ripe and it is mid November!!

Providing new and interesting plants is a large part of our goal. Our recently remodeled and expanded bedding department always has a selection of attractive interesting and colorful perennials to add to your garden. Even in the off season April keeps a selection that you will find interesting.

In the store Diana is always on the look out for organic methods of pest control. We test many products, but stock only those that actually work. We do try to provide organic pest control products first; from Sluggo, the pet safe snail control, to the new organic insect control, Spinosad, we are continually looking for the safest gardening products that work.

This winter The Garden Crew has plans to install more display vignettes to show what The Garden Crew can do and give you ideas for you to do. In addition to periodic maintenance and refreshing old gardens The Garden Crew can do complete new garden installations.

As usual I didn't get any before pictures but I do have some almost completed ones.

Note the raised planter with the plastic covering the retaining wall The Garden Crew built at the back. the retainer is to keep the soil from rotting out the fence and the plastic protects the retainer from staying wet and rotting. I was trying to get some structure in the yard with more usable hard surface for people. The block wall gives us more sitting area and the pavers gives the ahrd surface. Pavers also drain so light rains disappear. We also added a gravel drainage area with drainage to the street for those hard rains.

In addition we lined the wall with plastic to keep water from leaking out the front.

This spring after everything is a little established I will post more pictures with what we did for the plantings.

and this one

You can see what I meant by a sea of junipers. The area is mounded and looks like a peninsula in front of the house. Donna and decided to see if we could get some use out of the area and so we looked into developing a front courtyard.

Here is a picture of the mound from the back

You can see the area we are cutting out from the back to create a patio. there will be a Cal Stone retainer block wall to create some structure and hold the soil back. The existing exposed aggregate walk way is coming out and the patio and walk way will be a Cal Stone Quarry Stone paver patio.

More....

As you can see here we are putting a short fence on the top of the mound to increase the privacy. It is short because on top of the mound a full 5 ft or 6 ft fence would be overpowering.

Because of the shape of the front yard we are installing a second entrance that goes over the mound with an arbor over the entry.

It has a wisteria planted that I intend to keep under control and only let it be on the arbor. (As an aside, when you use wisteria be sure you don't let it wrap trunks around any posts or lumber. If you do wisteria is capable of twisting and destroying timber up to a 4x6 post.)

You can see the start of the walkway over the mound. eventually there will be a gate and steps down to the front patio.

We recently put in some rocks to create some structure in the very front. The area is to provide additional seasonal color using annuals and perennials to accent the rocks.

The lowest area in front of the rocks is planted with Iceland Poppies that are just starting to set buds. Behind them we planted "Grande snaps" ( in spite of the name they are semi dwarf to about 18".

In addition we have pansies, Sugar Plum Cranesbill, Bidens, and candytuft. By the fence there is a combination of foxy foxglove and delphnium.

Out of the corner of your eye you might be able to see some of the other things planted so far. They include landscape roses, Alexandrina Oriental Magnolia Ballerina climbing rose, Don Egolf dwarf redbud, Ruth's Red Japanese Maple (A new variety, as a trial to see how it does in the sun here.), Seiryu Japanese Maple, Chinese Dogwood, Arbutus Marina and Dark Shadows leptospermum.

On a personal note I want to share a blog that my daughter has been posting about her trip to Uganda. She is visiting with friends of a friend in villages and cities, not in hotels as a tourist on safari.

I find that real experiences by individual people make more of an impression on me than articles by journalists about conditions in Africa.

Visit her blog at http://mungu-ni-upendo.blogspot.com
or Sara's Blog

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