The project of converting my front yard from turf grass with Asian shrubs to all native plants.

pollinator garden

Sign on a tree trunk reads:

While I was recovering from surgery, the 3 sisters garden ran its course. I got a huge yield of terrible ears of corn, a decent amount of acorn squash that I neglected, and 0 pea or bean plants.

My philosophy is that any near-0 input gardening that produces biomass is still a win. I got lots of corn stalks and squash vines along with the failed produce. So the soil wins, regardless.

An order from Prairie Moon came in under bad timing, so it took me 3 days to install the new pollinator garden.

Broken-open cardboard boxes next to a livestock watering tank and a baseball cap.

A mulch filled garden bed bordered by old fence and tree stumps, small plants visible with space around them; at the far end, some bushes and a street.

A mulch filled garden bed bordered by old fence and tree stumps, small plants visible with space around them.

The beds hadn't even been prepared yet so that was a hasty job of sheet mulching, which took all the unglossy cardboard I had plus all I could beg off the Wendy's.

The feed and seed store guy tried to sell me 60 bags of mulch for this. (I usually make my own but no time.)
The mulch calculator told me 10 bags. The truth was more like 15 but I had a couple other spots that needed it, so I wound up with 20.

Lesson: look it up yourself.