You may not think these changes are exciting, but they make me feel all giddy inside!
About 2 years ago, we graded down our front yard to allow it to be irrigated. (saving us a ton of money by reducing our water needs) See, irrigation is a super cheap way to water your lawn. Since the water is not treated with chlorine and comes straight from the lake, it only costs us about $100 a year to pay to water our acre lot.
This is how it looks when we irrigate our backyard. Aw, look how little my kids were! Yes we let our kids play in un-chlorinated water. It’s like a pond in our very own backyard. They agree not to drink it, we agree to let them play in it.
Originally when we bought the house, the front yard was raised above irrigation level and watered by sprinklers. It cost a lot to keep it watered year-round.
You know from THIS POST, we’re all about saving money, which led to us grading down the front yard so the irrigation would run to the front and water for free.
We had a lot of dirt left over and so we poured it over the river rock on the side of our driveway.
Kevin’s been parking on it, but it just looks bad, it’s uneven, and there’s been weeds growing on the edges.
Add Kevin’s awesome car and you’ve got a crappy looking driveway.
We knew we wanted to fill it with crushed granite so weeds wouldn’t grow, but we thought it would be expensive, so we kept pushing it off, working on other projects. Lucky for us, we found the best guy to do it and he sure gave us a smokin’ deal!
{BEFORE}
{LEVELING IT} 
{DUMPING THE CRUSHED GRANITE}
{PLAYING IN THE CRUSHED GRANITE}
{OH EM GEE LOOK AT THAT}
I know it’s not really pretty but I’ll take a guarantee of no weeds over a pretty color any day!
Now, on to the next project! My………G A R D E N! Seriously if I could figure out a way to make an opera lady sing out when you scroll to this picture I would. I’m that excited. After grading down the front yard, we had even more dirt that we used it to build up a pad of dirt for my garden. At the time, I was sure I wanted to keep it out of the irrigation and used either a drip system or sprinklers to water it.
BUT, after a lot of research and talking to some experts, we decided to again, use the benefits of irrigation to water our garden. It was a tough decision because of WEEDS, WEEDS, WEEDS. That’s the bad thing about irrigation, it always brings weeds. BUT, irrigation is seriously THE BEST water for an organic garden and so I decided that trumped the weed dilemma. Only time will tell if this was a good decision.
{BEFORE}
{AFTER}
Yeah, totally doesn’t look different, I know. But it was graded down about a foot and expanded from 600sq ft to 1000sq ft. You can see how high it was on the back wall.
See that irrigation just itching to water the garden? All it needs is some rows for the irrigation to run down, some organic compost, a big sturdy fence and we’ll be ready to garden come spring!
One of my hopes is that the animals will eat all the weeds and grass around the edge and help keep the weeds out. The phrase, “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” is absolutely true when it come to animals and they should (crossing fingers) trim around the fence for me.
Well, that’s it. Doesn’t look like a lot, but I’m super excited about it. Now I just need an expert on gardening to show me the ropes. Anybody wanna volunteer?
I’m not getting this at all, lol. I’m very interested so will ask for clarification. Thanks for suffering my cluelessness 🙂 So, you collect runoff water over your grassed, treed yard, essentially flooding it all temporarily, and it absorbs slowly into the ground, eventually drying up?
Hi Colleen,
We have flood irrigation that comes from the local lake down canals and into our yard:)
When I lived in Utah, the irrigation water would flow right next to our house and we watered our lawn with it. BUT, we were told not to use it for anything else because it carried fertilizer and pesticides and other fun things due to runoff. I wasn’t happy about using it for the grass, even. Plus, it looked disgusting. Do you not have the same runoff in your irrigation water?
Ours comes straight from the local lake and rivers so it’s the purest there is here{although I’m sure there are some pollutants from boats in the lake and such.} It comes out pretty clear though, so maybe that’s a good sign!
I can’t wait to see how the garden grows. A little jealous here right now 🙂
Brother Lunt has volunteered his services to those needing some help…I have the BEST neighbor.
He’s definitely already on my list!