Category: Hardscaping Page 2 of 8

Land Development | Hardscape | Fencing

Completing the Shed Patio

On 2023-02-06

Have you had a project that you just could not bring yourself to complete? A task that is fairly straightforward, but something about it just makes you not want to work on it? To me, this task is the shed patio.

I curved out this patio space in the Spring of 2020, when the pandemic just started and we were all stuck at home. The tearing-out process was easy, but we could not get our hands on any materials needed to build it back up.

During the next year or so, we were able to gather the stones and pavers needed for this project. But we did not get into building right away. We kept our attention inside for the guest bathroom and the kitchen, and finished all the interior renovation just before the summer of 2022.

When the cooler weather of Fall rolled around, it was finally time to tackle the shed patio! Slav was in for some serious dirt work, and I really wanted to get the surrounding garden beds finished.

From the picture above you can see the terrace garden I created back in 2020. We have since planted an apple tree here, then filled the space around it with whatever we had on hand – mostly irises and russian sages. I had no idea about how I wanted in this garden to look, just did not want it to be bare.

Except the apple tree, every plant here is either a freebie or a divide. But they seemed to be thriving here and filled the garden bed quickly.

To finish the patio we first needed to remove more soil to create the correct depth for the pavers. We also wanted to build a retaining wall to hold back the soil and mulch in the terrace above, which would work and look a lot better than the wood stumps. Lastly, we needed to lay the flagstone pavers!

These tasks are very physical, so Slav became the muscle in this project. He started by scrapping soil off the patio surface. We had black plastic covering the soil for over two years, so the ground was fairly moist and surprisingly easy to dig.

The soil removed was dumped at a low spot in our yard, behind the drive gate and where we parked the trailer:

This spot was already low when we moved in, and it settled a lot more because of the weight of the heavy trailer. As you can see, the dogs did not help – they like to dig big holes under the trailer and sleep in dirt.

This spot needed more soil and we saw it as a perfect opportunity to get rid of the soil removed from the patio surface.

The pups were not thrilled with us taking their “sandbox” away. They silently judged us from the comfort of the shade and soft lawn.

We compacted the spot down after all the earth work and I cannot believe that this small area swallowed such much! But it was perfect – solid, level, and just below the concrete sidewalk.

While Slav was scraping the patio base, I worked on adding a flower bed between the patio and the lawn. The lawn at this corner is always patchy and hard to maintain. Therefore, we decided to extend the existing flower bed further into the lawn, and completely wrap around the shed patio.

Except this corner. We wanted a smooth transition from the lawn grass to the flagstone patio, instead of a step down. So we could easily move wheelbarrow and lawn mower in and out of the shed.

As usual, I spray-painted the shape of the new flower bed, then moved the metal edging to create the new boundary.

I liked the idea of this new flower bed. Once flowers started to grow this bed would mask the flagstones from the lawn, bringing some softness between the two flat surfaces. It also defines the patio entry point better – as soon as I put the metal edging down, we naturally walked around it and onto the future path, including the dogs!

After I established the boundary of the new flower bed, Slav was able to flip soil directly into it to fill the beds. We also laid the first row of the retaining wall blocks to make sure we liked how everything looked together.

To finish the flower bed off I mulched it with wood chips and lined the metal edging with tree stumps and branches. I prefer the look of organic borders. Once the grass grow up in summer, you will not see the metal edging at all.

Here is another look of the lawn-patio transition. We were able to tuck the drip tubing for the fruit trees behind the retaining wall and between the lawn and flagstone:

After creating a gentle slope away from the shed, Slav buried the phone line (not in use) and compacted the soil in this area. We kept the other end of the patio open as well so we can walk onto the mulched area and around the shed easily.

At this point, I started loving it. Our little garden shed was so lovable, and with the new patio it would be super cute! We would be working on the retaining wall next, so stay tuned!

A Veggie Garden Upgrade

By Alison

On 2020-11-05

In From Farm to Table, Hardscaping

2020 might have been the best year in my veggie garden yet. I planted only what we like to eat, and raised most of the plants from seeds myself. For the first time, the joy of return exceeded the labor and stress gardening in this space.

I also had plenty of time to take a hard look at the veggie garden. It has been producing well, thanks to periodic compost application. Practically speaking, there isn’t anything I have to do to here for productivity. But it does bother me how messy it looked:

The edging made of scrap wood, the woodchip mulch, the lawn grass keep growing into the veggie bed…More I looked at this space, more I wanted to give it a facelift. After all, the goal of gardening this Fall is to make the gardener happy, remember?

Can you tell what I did now? In short, I replaced all the woodchip mulch with pea gravel.

Do you like it? I loved it. And Slav likes it too! When I first proposed this project Slav immediately agreed. I was surprised that he even had an opinion, but then I realized that he always has an opinion, just might not say it voluntarily. 🙂 Oh man!

The veggie garden has experienced a few cosmetic upgrades. When we first started this space in 2018, we kept the lawn between the veggie beds. Inevitably, grass grew into the beds rapidly. The following season, we put down cardboard with woodchip mulch on top to create some pathways. This method worked well for over a year, but then the cardboard broke down and weeds started finding their way out again. I guess the woodchip mulch we used is too coarse to block the light. If we had used compost over the cardboard layer, we might have completely blocked weed growth. But in general, we are ready to move onto other mulch material offering more tidy appearance.

When we built the horizontal fence next to the vegetable patch, a combination of landscape fabric + pea gravel was used under the fence for weed suppression. It worked very well, and we loved the look of pea gravel too! After going through our options, we decided to expand the pea gravel into the veggie garden, which would also get rid of the railroad ties (saved from the old fence) we used to separate the two materials.

So I got to work, the first step was to rake away the woodchips. I started from the corner of the garden, where the veggie patch meets the small flower bed:

The soil underneath the woodchip mulch was so rich. Apparently, the cardboard we put down in 2019 has completely disintegrated underneath the mulch.

Remember this small flower bed? I carved it out this Spring for the ginkgo tree, and added irises to fill the space. I intended to keep it mulched, so I moved the metal edging to keep the pea gravel out and topped the bed with a fresh layer of black mulch.

Look at the ginkgo tree!

I know, it still look like a twig…but it actually grew a lot. It is definitely a much stronger twig now.

Love the leaves. Ginkgo is also called maidenhair tree because of the shape of its leaves.

Below is the transformation of the side pathway. After removing all the mulch, I got rid of the railroad ties, and lined the path with landscape fabric.

Even without the pea gravel layer, it looked a lot better already! Next, I raked woodchips off the pathways between the veggie beds. At this point, Slav was recruited to help with the old strawberry bed.

These strawberries have been here for three years and stopped producing this year. As the strawberry plants became weaker, lawn grass took over. Knowing this bed will be turned this Fall, I basically let it go the entire summer. So it looked bad… Upon my request, Slav dug up the old strawberry plants, sifted through the top soil to remove large stones and grass roots, and mixed in a couple inches of fresh compost. The soil in this bed is so fluffy and rich now, it will serve as an awesome garlic bed for next year.

When Slav worked on turning the old strawberry bed, I started putting down a new irrigation line. The veggie bed is watered by drip, but the irrigation grid was never connected to the timer when I automated most of our irrigation this Spring. So basically, I still had to drag a hose to the veggie garden, connect it to the drip grid in order to water this space. The main reason of leaving it out of the automatic setup was simple: the veggie patch is far away from our backyard outdoor faucet. But since Slav was already digging, he offered to bury a water line for me to connect the veggie garden drip grid to the outdoor faucet!

I connected a long poly tubing to the existing veggie garden drip grid using a T-connector, then Slav buried the tubing all the way to the outdoor faucet at the back of our house:

Slav has buried poly tubing in front yard this Spring so he moved very quickly on this project. It probably only took him half an hour. But let me tell you, his work will save me at least half an hour, maybe an hour each day during growing season to keep the veggie plants alive. Thanks Slav!

After all the pathways cleared, I laid down landscape fabric and Slav brought in the pea gravel.

What a transformation! Here was how the garden looked with woodchip mulch:

And here is its new look with pea gravel:

I think the small size of pea gravel made the pathways look tidy and spacious. I also love the color contrast between the gravel and the dark compost in veggie beds.

I cannot help but putting a chair here. Morning coffee has never been so relaxing.

It took us two days and $40 of pea gravel to complete the upgrade. Slav picked up the pea gravel with our trailer from a landscape company, so we did not pay any delivery fees. We had landscape fabric and poly tubing in hand. The woodchip mulch removed from the veggie garden did not go to waste either – it was applied to the newly planted patio garden, making this project essentially zero-waste. 🙂

This small facelift for our veggie garden officially concluded the gardening tasks this Fall. A peony garden + a tidy veggie garden will give our backyard an awesome start next Spring. They are also treats to myself, after all the stress and work we had to put up with this year. 2020 has reminded me how to be kind to human beings, including myself. Treating myself is not selfish, and asking Slav for help does not make me weak. 2020, you have taught me a lot!

Home Stay + Drip Works

By Alison

On 2020-05-18

In Hardscaping

When it comes to gardening, water usage has always been on my mind. Colorado is famous for its snow-capped mountains. However, our growing environment is actually high desert, which means dry, cold, and very windy. The high clay content in our soil also makes snow and rain harder to penetrate. Therefore, from hardscape to plant selection, how to save irrigation usage has been driving my decision making.

In 2018, we built a dry creek in our front yard to prevent surface water run-off. We also converted large area of lawn space to mulched flower beds to reduce evaporation. Both hardscape and mulch are effective ways to hold the merely 15″ precipitation (annually!) in our land. In addition, the method of watering also matters.

We have been using drip irrigation in our flower beds for two years. More recently, we adopted drip irrigation for our front yard lawn space too! The most significant upgrade we made to our irrigation system is the recent automation. In today’s post, I’d like to show you the results of our hard work on drip automation, including how we adopted drip system for our front yard lawn space.

Backyard Watering Needs and Existing Drip Zones

I set my heart on drip irrigation very early, and have been setting it up in every flower bed I created. The very first flower bed we planted on this property was this pollinator/herb garden back in Spring, 2018. Due to the oval shape, I laid the 1/2″ solid tubing in circular fashion, and installed 2 gallon per hour emitters to point at the root ball of each plant.

In this garden I planted exclusively drought-tolerate plants. They may not give the biggest and most fragrant flowers, but they are much more appropriate for this sunny location, and definitely give the strongest support to native pollinators. Now being more established, these plants require minimal watering even in the hottest summer days. I usually water this bed once a week for an hour, which means that most of the plants here get 2 gallon of water per week.

The vegetable garden is located on the south side of the backyard and has its own drip system. Instead of emitters, soaker hoses were installed to accommodate the denser planting and shallower roots.

Since setting up the garden in 2018, we switched to the 1/4″ soaker hoses from DIG, from which our drip connectors, tubing, and emitters come. To connect the whole veggie garden on the same grid, I ran a 1/2″ solid tubing along one edge of the bed, to which the 1/4″ soaker hoses connect and then run off the whole length of each veggie bed. The whole veggie garden is watered everyday in summer, for an hour or so.

All of our fruit trees and climbing roses along the back fence share the third drip system. Solid 1/2″ tubing runs along the back fence and individual emitters sprout out from the solid tubing and point to the root balls of individual plants. Each fruit trees had a 4 gallon per hour emitter while the roses sported on 2 gallon per hour emitters. This zone got watered once a week last summer.

A more recent addition to our edible garden is a berry patch, shown in the picture above. In the Spring of 2019, we covered the north slope in our backyard with mulch and planted 15 raspberry plants, 5 blackberry plants, two hazelnut trees. I used 1/2″ solid tubing to create a grid, and punched individual 2 gallon per hour emitters to the root ball of each shrub/tree.

This zone gets watered every other day as fruit production requires more water.

Timer for Automation | Reconfiguring Drip Grids

As you can see, all of these drip zones were created as individual zones. To water each zone, a garden hose has to be connected to the inlet of that zone. With different watering schedule, in the hot part of the summer, watering often takes the entire evening during which every hour I had to connect and disconnect the hose among these beds. It quickly became a tiring and time-consuming task. On top of that, it felt absurd to ask our house sitter to do the same when we were on vacation. I had to admit, there were many times I forgot about watering, and left the drip running for hours. It was not only inefficacious but also ironic considering the whole purpose of using drip irrigation. By the end of 2019, it became clear that we needed to automate the irrigation system.

This Spring, I pulled the trigger on this handy Melnor digital timer after some research. It was actually sold in Lowe’s – but of course I ordered it online and had it shipped to my door, pandemic style.

Melnor Digital Hose End Timer

I order this particular timer for its ability to water four zones on different schedules. It also acts as a splitter for outdoor faucet. I did not go for the solar-powered models, due to mixed reviews. I also did not go for anything super fancy like wifi-connected ones, which are much more expensive. This timer is only ~$50 per pop. If it works as intended, I consider it a good investment with a fair price tag.

Since the timer only offers four outlets, I decided to combine the pollinator/herb drip zone and the fruit tree/rose drip zone to spare one outlet for general use. To combine the two zones together and run it back to the outdoor faucet, I first installed a T-connector at the end of the main drip line circulating the pollinator/herb garden:

The solid tubing off to the left runs to the outdoor faucet, at the back of our house.

The last solid tubing coming off the T-connection to the bottom of the picture runs towards the fruit trees and climbing roses. Along the way, it curves through the newly created terrace garden. I recently planted some vine crops here, so I installed some emitters on the solid tubing to water them.

The 1/2″ solid tubing continues to run between the trees and roses, through the middle of the mulched bed:

To water the trees and roses I installed emitters and directed them to the root ball of each plants. The fruit trees used to be watered with one 4-gallon per hour emitter, pointing directly at the trunk of the trees.

As these trees grow fuller and started producing fruit, they need more water. In addition, their drip lines expands, so the emitters needed to be moved away from the root ball.

To better water these trees, I added two more 2-gallon per hour emitters to each tree, making it total of 8 gallon per hour watering capacity. The emitters were also moved to the new drip line of each tree.

Each climbing rose used to be watered by one 2-gallon per hour emitter. I bumped them up to 4 gallon ones and moved the emitters further away from the root balls as well.

Last, I buried all the drip tubing under the mulch to keep them out of direct sun. This action does not only extended the life of the tubing and emitters, but also keeps the water cool when coming out of these black tubing. Needless to say that it is also a cleaner look when they are completely hidden.

Installing Timer for Backyard Irrigation

Next, I connected each drip zone back to the timer. In the picture below, the rightmost black tubing is the main line for the berry patch, and the second to the right solid tubing is the one connected to the herb garden and the fruit trees.

The veggie garden is located on the other side of the yard, so I connected a garden hose from the timer to the veggie garden drip zone. In this way we can detach the hose when mowing the lawn.

The last garden hose on the very left is reserved for general use. We use it for lawn sprinkles, as well as to water the newly planted patio planters.

The timer is rather bulky for the small clearance under the faucet, so it was mounted on the back of the house using a piece of plywood, and connected to the outdoor faucet with a short hose.

Front Yard Drip Automation

Connecting the drip zones for mulched flower beds

In 2018 we completed the front yard landscape, by converting over 700 sqft of lawn into mulched flower beds.

In this large area, I set two separated drip zones – one for the arborvitae trees planted on the left side, the other one for the perennial shrubs to the right. The reason of creating two separated zones was mainly due to different water usage between the trees and shrubs.

The perennial zone was set up using drip tubing with built-in emitters. They are better suited for densely planted flower beds, and work especially well with ground covers:

The tree zone, on the other hand, consists of a long piece of 1/2″ solid tubing along the hedge. Individual emitters were directed to the root ball of each tree. Bigger shrubs planted at the corner of the yard also utilize this zone, as they need less water than the perennial flowers.

These two zones had their own inlets, which could be connected to a garden hose to water. Now with the automatic timer, I need to bring water from the outdoor faucet to these zones via a solid tubing. As the first step, I linked the two separated drip zones together so only one solid tubing is needed from the timer to the flower bed. To ensure that I could water the two zones separately, I installed on-off valves to each zone:

The 1/2″ solid tubing to the left (currently shut off) is connected to the tree zone:

The flower bed in front of the fence is also watered by this zone. Below is the picture taken on the day I set up the drip system for this flower bed:

The short end of the tree zone waters the three irises next to the dry creek:

The solid tubing on the right (currently open) continue to run along the plastic edging, until it is connected to the perennial drip zone:

You can see that it connects to the brown drip tubing with built-in emitters.

To connect the flower bed drip zones to the outdoor faucet, I ran another piece of solid 1/2″ tubing along the edge of the front lawn, next to the gravel, all the way back to the outdoor faucet/timer:

You can see two solid tubing in the pictures above. Only one of them is bringing the water to the flower beds. As of the second tubing, it is for watering the lawn space.

Installing Micro-sprinklers for Front Lawn

A big part of automating our irrigation system is to set up automatic sprinkles for the front lawn. We have been watering the front yard by hand during the last two summers. Since DIG, where we got our drip system offers micro-sprinklers, I decided to give it a try for lawn space.

The first step is always to run the solid tubing, which brings water to where needed. I laid down 1/2″ solid tubing along the boundary of the front yard lawn:

then installed micro-sprinkles a few feet apart:

I was able to surround the whole lawn with one solid piece of 1/2″ tubing. I terminated the tubing under the pine tree, near where it starts:

We also have a piece of lawn on the other side of the driveway. It is almost a square. I ran the 1/2″ tubing with a few T connectors and 90-degree elbows, then installed micro-sprinkles as well:

The inlet was set to connect to a garden hose, as opposed to the timer directly as the other side. It is because that the water has to be brought from across the driveway, and the black solid tubing cannot stand the weight of the car.

The solid tubing runs along the sidewalk:

and the driveway:

And curves around the mailbox flower bed:

On this side, the tubing lines along the property boundary:

After I installed the micro-sprinkles, Slav buried all the solid 1/2″ tubing around the front lawn underground:

It created a much neater look. Now you cannot see the solid tubing anymore, and to mow the lawn, we just need to simply move the stakes.

Timer Installation for the Front Yard Irrigation

Similar to the backyard, I mounted the timer above the faucet with a piece of plywood.

Then I connected the timer to the outdoor faucet with a short hose.

The four automatic outlets are, from left to right: front yard garden hose wheel (for general use, I did not set time on this outlet), flower bed drip zones (can be watered separately with the two on-off valves), front lawn in front of the house, and front lawn in front of the fence gate (via a garden hose over the driveway).

For a cleaner look, I tucked the two 1/2″ black solid tubing under the gravel. You can see them disappearing under the ground.

The Cost of Our Automatic Irrigation Setup

We have been using the new automatic system for two weeks and both timer have worked very well. With the two times installed, we are completely free from watering duty. Considering the price of the timer (~$50 per timer), I think it is completely worth it.

In addition to the two timers, we also paid $30 for 5′ hoses connecting the timers to the outdoor faucets, and $95 for two drip/micro-sprinkler kits used for the front lawn (under $50 each here). The kits come with many connectors we did not use, as well as hundreds feet of solid 1/2″ and 1/4″ tubing. We did not purchase any additional emitters or tubing for the whole project, and we still have leftovers.

In summary, the total cost of the whole project was about $230. It isn’t nothing, but considering the time we saved dragging hoses around, and the stress we are freed from, I think it is a good investment. The tubing should last years, and the timer feels solid. I will make sure to report back on the reliability and the quality of these timers. Hopefully they last for a few years!

This project should reduce our irrigation water usage, just by switching to micro-sprinklers on the front lawn alone. Another big advantage of automating the irrigation is that now our plants get consistent watering. We often do not think about this, but plants are like us, having a consistent schedule for nutrition, water, and sleep really benefits. I hope you are still following a healthy daily schedule and life style while staying at home. I know we are!