Jute Erosion Mesh: Lawn Upholstery Part 2

It Finally Begins to Biodegrade

Almost 2 years ago, I covered the front yard with jute mesh to keep the grass seeds from blowing away or drying out. It worked as intended, but it's taking longer than I expected to degrade.

The mesh in the dryer areas of the yard (where the grass is thinnest) is still quite strong. The mesh where the grass was thickest has almost completely vanished. In a wetter climate, or if I had watered the grass more, it would have all vanished by now.

Raking the leaves this spring was tricky because the mesh was still strong enough to snag the rake tines. This winter the mesh is there, but although it looks intact it has most of its strength. I raked up small shreds and an occasional tangle of strings as I raked the dead grass and leaves.

The last of the erosion control cloth

 I'm tossing leaves, mesh and dead grass into the compost bins. By this time next year they will be ready for adding to the vegetable garden’s raised beds.



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Curb Appeal #1: Getting From Curb to Door

Your first thought about your house's curb appeal should not be what color to paint the front door, where to hang hand-crafted wreaths, or what to plant under the windows.

Neglected house

Having the cutest front door on the block doesn't matter if it's hard to get from the curb to the front door.  I'll expand these bullet points later into posts with examples, explaining why they are important, but for now, here's some things to think about.
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DIY No-Tool Shade Screens

Keeping sunshine out of the house during the summer keeps the utility bills lower, as does letting sunshine into the house during the winter.  The obvious answer is removable shade screens.

The problem: How to mount shade screens on windows that have no place to attach the screens because the windows are inset into old adobe and fragile stucco instead of wood or concrete.

The solution: Use tension rods to hold the shadecloth top and bottom as if it were a French door curtain.  No power tools required, 

Despite the non-standard construction materials and methods, the screens have just finished their fourth summer and survived several severe thunderstorms each summer.

Tension rods holding shadecloth

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The New Raised Bed Corners

The nail-free raised beds I made have a minor flaw: they leak dirt at the corners because it's a simple right angle butt joint.  The cedar fence slats touch but they are not connected.

Corners touch, but do not connect. Dirt leaks out

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Shed Door Retainer - What Took So Long?

This is a simple solution to the problem of a tool shed door that would not stay open.  After a couple of years of propping it open with rocks and bricks, and getting trapped in the dark when the wind blew it shut, I found a solution.

DUH!  Put a hook on the fence rail and the eye on the door.  Latch it open!  What took me so long, I think, is that the solution was so simple. 

Yes, it's a hook and eye!

The other shed is further from the fence, so I bent skinny steel rod into an 18-inch hook.  Chain and a hook to connect between the shed door and the fence would also have worked, but I had the rod in the workshop and no chain. Read more!

Natural Pest Control for Gardeners and Landscapers: It's a Bug-eat-Bug World

The no-work, pesticide-free approach to controlling garden pests is to let their natural enemies eat them. The easiest and cheapest way to minimize the numbers of insects that damage your plants is to encourage predator insects that will eat the plant-damaging insects for free. The easiest and cheapest way to encourage these insect predators is to stop killing them - stop using pesticides in the garden. There may be a brief surge in the plant eaters, but the predator populations will expand to control them.

Caterpillar on 4 O'Clock Flowers

Think of the advantages for you - no buying pesticides, no weekends wasted spraying pesticides, not worries about pesticide residues on your vegetables. Just sit back and watch the food chain in action. For sex, violence and mayhem, it matches anything you can find on television, except maybe Game of Thrones.
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