New Victim in Yard
October 24th, 2008Store-Bought Poo Gets Tree Off to Pleasant Start
My fine new cara cara tree is in the ground. Praise God. And I did not even have a heart attack.
I think I did okay. One frustrating thing: the tree came in a pot a foot tall, and the packaging said to dig a hole “three times as wide and as deep” as the pot. Clearly, that means a cylindrical hole three feet deep and three feet wide. Imagine digging that in my rocky yard. No way. I got on the University of Florida website, and they said to dig a hole NO DEEPER than the pot was tall. With SLOPING SIDES. Now I was getting somewhere. That made the job possible. Had I paid attention to the packaging, I would now be dead, and the authorities could just roll me into my giant hole.
I paid for excrement. Again. I don’t know why I can’t just lower a suction hose into the septic tank. I put maybe 25 pounds of manure in the hole with the plant, and I put the dirt back in (minus a couple of gallons of rocks), and I fertilized the general area. Then I did something the university website told me to do. I mulched with Chattahoochee gravel. This is brilliant. This stuff can’t rot, it can’t hold water, and it will keep weeds down. Maybe it will save me from the weedeaters that keep ripping into my trees.
It was depressing, using my new Gerber to rip open a bag of crap. But I took a deep breath and did it. This is what I bought it for. Maybe I should have a Gator II for the yard and a clean Gator II for regular life.
I bought myself a hoe. This is a marvelous implement everyone needs. I think I was biased against buying one because of the miserable times I spent helping my cousin hoe his tobacco. But there is no hoe substitute. It does things a shovel refuses to do. And it’s really dull, so it gives me an excuse to get out the grinder.
I can’t wait for my poison to arrive so I can start systematically killing my St. Augustine grass and letting the Bermuda invade. I’m convinced that St. Augustine is just a delivery system for bugs and disease, and besides, it’s ugly. And I enjoy poisoning things, so that’s a plus.
I better eat lunch before the ambulance arrives.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:17 PM
Untreated septic will chemically burn your plants. Has to have some of the…. stuff leached out of it first.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:43 PM
Og, it sounds as though you speak from experience.
October 25th, 2008 at 10:29 AM
The only reason to dig deeper than the pot would be to add ammended soil underneath the tree. It’s a good idea, but you don’t need 3x depth to do that.
Definitely start composting. Dirty hippies learned about composting from people like your grandparents. Costco sells a great plastic composting bin. I know it seems foolish to buy a special plastic bin, but it works something like 3x faster than a metal trash can (it’s black so it really sucks in the heat) plus it’s made of petrochemicals so you can still have a net negative carbon footprint while composting.
Then, of course, there’s vermiculture…
October 25th, 2008 at 3:54 PM
Could you take some pictures of your trees and yard – and put them up on the blog? It would be cool to see what you are writing about.