With the constant hauls of gravel that I keep bringing in once to twice a week I'm getting plenty of ground covered around the area. The latest area I'd been concentrating on is the garden. I had already laid gravel down in the main driveway all the way up to the entrance to the garden and started going into the garden, covering the soft ground that has been a nuisance for the longest time. Now I continue moving further into the garden, laying a path to cover the highest traffic areas of the garden, leading back to the rear of the garden where I have the raised beds set up. Since I have an old raised bed still present on the ground plus a couple of fruit trees on the opposite side of the pathway that runs past that raised bed, I continued laying gravel down over this area, butting against the raised bed but only extending partway to an imaginary line where the fruit trees are at. The idea is that at some point in the future I will lay some railroad ties or landscape timbers around the fruit trees to do some sort of food forest type setup, probably for growing something like lettuce or some other low light plant. I don't want to waste gravel covering area that will ultimately be covered by timbers later on. I can always come back with more gravel to fill in any areas that are left uncovered when I do lay down the boards I want to use. Since the raised beds and drum planters along the back fence are over what was grassy area, I took a little more time to ensure that gravel that I laid down either met the drum planters or went under the raised beds some. While I didn't just shovel more gravel under the raised beds or lay it all down around the drums to make sure that every square inch of ground was covered all the way up to the fence, I did make sure to get enough covered to help keep high grass from popping up in the walkway. When I get through doing the initial covering of the walkways I'll come back over these areas to spread more gravel to fill in the gaps. The gravel path continued on along the path of the rear fence and the raised beds until I covered the mushy ground that existed in front of said raised beds. The ground really got that way on the count of the micro irrigation system's water eventually making its way to the ground enough so that it soaked the ground to the point of becoming mushy. With the gravel covering the ground and being mashed into the mud, we can hope to get that concrete effect enough so that even with the water on the ground the gravel will help keep the ground solid enough that we can walk over it without sinking into the mud. Because there was an old raised bed that had deteriorated into the ground along with a fig tree in a tire plus an old ground level raised bed that I was planning on dismantling, I didn't make the gravel path wide. Besides not having the gravel to spare to allow me full coverage of the muddy area, widening the gravel path would again take me into the areas that I may set up something later and I don't want to find myself wasting gravel on the count of just covering it all up in the future. I can always come back over the areas later on to apply gravel if need be. With the gravel path laid down where its at, I can now move about through the garden from the gate all the way around the back, being able to service any of the raised beds and drum planters while being able to wear lighter shoes and not having to worry about sinking in mud in spots. As I bring in more gravel I will continue to fill in areas for aesthetics. The more areas I cover with gravel, especially areas between beds or drums and along fence lines, the more areas I will not have to worry about weeds or grass or other unwanted foliage popping up in quantities that will make it a problem.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|