Little bluestem is a beautiful, native grass that turns many colors, not just blue. When I found out that its roots can go down as much as six feet, I started planting them on the slope, to help with erosion. The only place I’ve been able to find them around here is the Garden in the Woods. Here’s one of the first batch, newly planted, by the highbush blueberries.
Our first pile of wood chips went right into our front yard. A friend had given us some magnolias, redbuds and dogwoods. Still in their pots, I buried them in the wood chips, where they successfully overwintered.
The second big pile of wood chips we scored from a tree person was placed in the back acre, which we now owned. Now we had chips closer to where we needed them the most, where the ground was flatter. There are only a few little areas on the slope where wood chips work as mulch, without washing away in the rain.
I called around, trying to find the exact right kind of mulch for the slope. It couldn’t be wood chips, because they’d just wash away in the rain. It couldn’t be fine pieces, either. Instead, I found the biggest, most irregular pieces of bark, that would sort of hook onto each other, and stop from sliding down. It was hard to find mulch that hadn’t been treated with color, for a reasonable price.
We had an entire team of guys come over and help us plant all the plants we ordered, and also do some weeding and mulching.
It almost looked too manicured. I actually prefer a more naturalistic design. But at least the knotweed was being kept at bay (not to mention the bittersweet, multiflora, tartarian honeysuckle, autumn olive, grapevine and spurges).
All of those phragmites really added up. This was one of many huge brushpiles of invasive plants that we had to burn over the years.
Cornus amomum (“silky dogwood”) has beautiful red twigs in the winter. This native forms thickets that are great for all kinds of wildlife. We bought ten 1-year-old specimens at a fantastic price.
There were so many huge multiflora roses invading the west end of the pond, and so many old, huge bittersweet vines strangling the trees, one day I decided to have at them with the backhoe. I carefully positioned the tractor, not sideways, but up and down on the slope down to the pond, then dug in the teeth of the front end loader, to help stabilize it.
This:
stood no chance against this:
roots and all:
Bittersweet:
Now you can at least access the pond, from this side:
Most of the phragmites we’ve encountered this summer are dead stalks. There are a few resprouts, such as these:
And these:
Here’s a closeup photo of pulled phragmites resprouts:
As the summer progresses, the level of the pond diminishes, so it’s a good chance to easily reach even more dead phragmites stalks, and get as many as possible of them out of the pond. Here, Steve is working on the east end:
There are so many photos from 2012, I don’t know where to begin! So many people spent so many days, not just removing the tops of the phragmites, which were now dead and brown, but also digging out as much as their smelly and disgusting rhizomes as possible. Now that they had been significantly weakened, we wanted to minimize their re-sprouting. Plus, we just wanted those huge, ugly, thick rhizomes out of our pond, so the plants and animals that belonged there, like this black swallowtail butterfly, could use it.
