Backyard Progress After 5 Months

Planting in Southern California in the fall is definitely the way to go. Getting as much of the winter rain as possible gets everything going and most of the plants are established enough by the spring to flower.

I started the southwest side of the backyard in September with help from my friend, Steve. I didn't water this part of the yard for the 2 years before we started. Here is a picture of what we were dealing with.

The long, brown, root-like things are grass rhizomes. This type of grass is summer growing, so it was dormant at the time, so although they are brown and dead-looking in the dry, cold season they spring to life after the rain when it warms up. We dug them up and raked through the dirt to remove them as thoroughly as possible - hopefully few to none will come back now that they've gotten rain and the heat is coming back! There were also some weeds and cool season, annual grasses mixed in.

Next, in October, I marked out the areas I wanted to plant in with wooden stakes and twine. Steve again helped as we built up a small hill as a feature (next to the wheelbarrow), using the mound of dirt that had been dug up from the front parkway and had been "composting" for a year and a half in the less frequently used east side of the yard. After planting all of the plants, I laid out newspaper (cardboard in some places) before we put down redwood mulch, both to help prevent weeds.

The area with plants, mulch, and sand in the walkways (also with newspaper underneath).

Finally, 5 months later, after an unusually wet year - the plants look great!

I've been keeping up with a small stream of weeds, but I think I had (and still have) an incredibly large seed bank. Before this project, I didn't consistently keep up with mowing or with killing typical backyard weeds. Also, I ran out of newspaper before I was able to cover all of the ground I covered with mulch and sand.  So far it has mostly been forbs and cool season, annual, non-rhizomatous grasses (growing from seed) coming up and they aren't very difficult to remove.

If I had the patience and time, I might have watered the area to see and kill what came up before planting and putting out the mulch and sand.  It's hard to wait though!