miki,

Black plastic held down by rocks would be most effective and inexpensive, too.

If you're going to mound, I'd use rocks, sections of 2x4 or 2x6 boards or roofing tiles.

I'm afraid I'm having trouble imagining your suggested set-up - that too may work but my suggestions are what's worked for me before.

It depends on what type of grass is there right now. The most surefire way is going to be performing 3 or 4 grow/kill cycles with roundup and/or another herbicide if you find you have roundup resistant varieties. This will also get rid of a lot of the seeds in the soil.

Please don't use trash to build up an area. The next person that tries to do anything with that space is going to want to hunt you down and beat you with those plastic bottles.

You have to be careful with what you do to the parkway. There are city ordinances that limit how much you ca actually do. Technically, there are to be no obstructions to the public right of way. There are also handicap accessibility issues. That is why people that try to put raised beds there get cited by the city.

What specifically are you trying to plant, because there is very little that is going to need drainage faster than what the native sand provides?

Oh, you mean the Devil's Strip? Yeah... I guess you could do all that stuff. OR... you could use a shovel.

Plastic bottles underground? Now, doesn't something tell you that that's not a good idea? There are SO many things a person can bury: rocks, old boat parts, yard waste, rocks, the neighbor's cat, romance novels, rocks, a mandolin, ice, palm fronds, bad art, broken clay pots, bones, rocks...

LOL here I thought I was being environmentally friendly by reusing plastics/ trash as a sort of landfill. Most are empty plastic water bottles and yogurt cups I had. I also thought sheet mulching was more envoronmentally friendly than spraying and tearing out sod then throwing it away.

I guess you all have a point.

Also, nil13 you have a great point about city ordinances and building up the planter. Perhaps I should just keep it low and plant there. I was considering planting jade, portulacara, aloe, dwarf agave and some other plants. I thought I would beautify the neighborhood because where I live people dont take care of that strip.

I suppose I won't mound it too high, just a few inches above the sidewalk.

Also I took measurements and its actually 25 feet by 7 feet of crab grass and weeds.

So for the Roundup/herbicide what do you mean by 3-4 grow cycles?

Thank you

grow/kill cycles are where you water the grass to get it growing. Then you kill it with the herbicide. Then once it has died, you water again to get it or any leftover seed growing then spray. rinse and repeat.

Now sheet mulching is more environmentally friendly, but it doesn't work anywhere near as well. If you have bermuda grass anywhere in there, it will make it through. multiple grow/kill cycles wlll germinate a lot of seed that wouldn't be killed by sheet mulching, so the overall weed load gets reduced. basically, if you hit an area really well with multiple grow/kill cycles you will have a much easier time later on and you won't really need to use herbicide ever after. Roundup is used for habitat restoration projects in that manner to knock back invasive species and allow natives to be more easily established.

If you spray, you don't have to tear anything out. It is organic matter that southern cal soil is desperately lacking.

nil13,

great advice. Thanks I'll be running a few grow/kill cycles as you said. For some reason I didn't even think of germinating and killing seeds. I would have had a lot of problems in the future weeding lol.

The area is just full of weeds and crabgrass because in my apartment we don't have sprinklers in the front and no one takes care of that area between the road/sidewalk.

Hopefully this succulent garden will beautify the neighborhood and in the future be a low-maintenence garden

Put a few stepping stones here and there so people can avoid stepping on the plants.

I would suggest to do a small area at a time. Don't do it all at once you will probably have too much on your plate to do it justice.

Yes hoovb, I'll definitely put stones around for stepping and a path.
laura, Hmm that might be a good idea. Maybe I'll do it in three parts to make it more manageable Thanks

I disagree. It's just the hell strip. Kill it all at once and after a few cycles mulch it all with gravel. Then plant as you can while dutifully killing any weeds that pop up. If you leave living grass and weeds in the strip, they will just keep spreading back into the areas you have just cleared. In the long run it will be a lot more work.

yorkiemiki, i think it's great you are thinking about doing something with your parkway! hanzrobo your 'Devil's Strip' tag was excellent but I really loved you land-fill items list ;-) Old boat parts, why didn't I think of that ?

I don't know that much about the Round Up method, but the parkways I've tore up [mainly fescue and some rye grass??] ---- I just took a shovel and skimmed off the grass just below it's root system, about 4-5" below the surface basically...

Then I roughly separate/recycle as much dirt as I can from the root area and toss the grassy tops away. Yes, it's a bit of work but it's free exercise and you get to play in the dirt ha ha...

From there, you can dig up the area deeper [even better, pray one of your neighbor has a rototiller you can borrow ;-)] and amend your soil and plant away.

And sure, you will get some weeds again but I think that's gonna happen no matter how you initially get rid of the grass.

As far as the mounds or semi raised areas, which is a great idea imo, especially aesthetically --- i just made sure I had plenty of dirt to build areas up. Surprised at how much it has NOT subsided... but having extra amounts of dirt to start with is nice.

So knock yourself out yorkiemiki --- the world needs less ugly 'devil strips' ;-) ;-)

Here are a few pics of what to expect if you decide rip it up...

{{gwi:632356}}

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It won't take long before things can really take off. This is about 3 years after the first two pictures... as you can tell, I like the 'stuffed' look...

{{gwi:632359}}

growforit, that's very nice! It's great that you left a pathway for pedestrians who cut corners... smart and considerate. I think you and I share a love for digging. The choice between shovel-wielding and not wielding is a clear one for me. Isn't it great to have a place to PIG? I see you leave no canvas bare:)- reminds me of something...

Hey thanks for the pics growforit (nice name) and hanzrobo. Those gardens are BEAUTIFUL and lush. More pics of "devils strips" or small area planters would help a lot

So here's an update on the soil. It is rock hard. It feels like drilling through STONE.

I can only dig about 4 inches deep with a shovel. I tried 2 different sturdy shovels as well as a hoe and none are cutting it.

I dug a hole about 4 inches in one area which took about 6 minutes to dig. I then filled it with water and it took:

4 min for 1st inch
8 min for 2nd inch
17 min for inch
apx 23 min for 4th inch to drain

Would that be considered good draining?

Also the soil below the top 1 inch is SO hard and dark so I feel that it is clay. But I did the jar/water method mentioned above with the top layer of soil, which contained a lot of organic grassy material (I plan on re-doing this test tomorrow because the first one I think was taken from too high a soil layer)

My results approximately:
45% sand (but when I drained this the sand was gooey and clumped together more like clay. But this 45% settled to the bottom )
35% loam (this settled within about 5-10 min)
10% clay ?(this was the layer that settled 24 hrs later)
10% other (this was just water but there was a ton of organic material floating on the top)

So like I said above, the "sand" that settled in first few minutes after I shook the jar of dirt in water was gooey when I took it out of the mixture. It didn't feel gritty like real sand, so I wonder if this test is accurate.

I have a feeling the soil is more clay then the test showed, but maybe it's because I just took it off the top 1-2 inches of soil and not whats underneath. I read somewhere that something called "gypsum"? is good for clay soil, is this true? Supposedly it has calcium which I believe is good for succulents?

Anyways I've been spraying the grass with RoundUp and will also remove as much of the grass as I can without breaking my shovel.

I'm 6 ft and 170 lbs and digging into this "devils strip" is like digging into limestone.

Also, nil, I'm going to do as you say and just do the whole thing at once (treating grass etc) then put the top amendments and then once the gravel is on top I will plant a little at a time.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to build up the soil with gravel/pumice/gritty sand to really get good drainage.

I was also wondering if coffee grinds would be good?? I'm trying to be thrifty about this and have unlimmited coffee grinds from starbucks

This post was edited by yorkiemiki on Mon, Sep 16, 13 at 13:53

23 minutes for the hole to drain? That's fast. you most likely won't need to add anything. when the hard soil has a lot of sand in it like that, it will be very easy to dig when wet. As far as you soil test is concerned, the numbers seem like they are a little off because you had a lot of the surface organic matter in it. you hve to get down a little further and collect your sample from the side of the whole to get a more accurate picture. sifting also helps remove that stuff. Don't count the floaters. It sounds like you have mostly sand and silt. That will drain well. The reason the soil gets so hard and why the sand felt goopey is because we have a lot of very fine snd and coarse silt that packs tpgether really tightly and is hydrophobic. some silt is also hiding in the sand fraction. If you want to improve the soil, all you probably need to add is some humus (organic matter). Just don't go crazy with it. Any more than 5% would be too much.

For all the plants you mentioned, you don't need any more drainage than you have. You will probably want soil that is more moisture retentive which is why I recommended humus. The humus will also help with fertility.

Cool thanks for the great advice

For humus would coffee grounds be OK?

I looked at the whole again and realized its really only about 3 inches deep and 5 inches in diameter kinda shallow on edges too. It's like concrete to dig.

Wow so I was about to add a bunch of pumice and sand/ gravel to the bottom layer. Do you think I should sheet mulch with newspaper over the killed grass to increase the humus?

I was thinking I could sheet mulch the killed grass and pour some cactus mix/ pumice on top 2 inches over the grass/sheet mulch

thanks!

coffee grounds will eventually turn into humus. The grass will eventually turn into humus. I'm not a big fan of sheet mulching because IMO is messes with the water absorbtion pattern of the bed. If it were my bed and I was being cheap, I would get some free composted mulch from the city and work that in. But I have all those plants growing in unamended native soil that is sandier than yourson a hillside in Mt Washington, so if you just wanted to leave it be and let the grass be the organic matter amendment, that's fine.

But if you want to make it easy, you can get a bag of soil amendment from a garden center and work some of that in.

Hey nil thank you again. I see you are from Mt. Washington. for somereason I read it as "Washington" like the state when I saw it before.

I think I'll try to just ammend the soil through use of the grass and a little bit of the stuff LA city will give for free and maybe throw in a tiny bit of coffee grinds.

THANKS!

So I've been slowly doing the grow kill cycles and dug down a lot deeper in areas. I have realized that I indeed do have a lot more CLAY than I had thought before.

It has been a long slow process but I'm getting there...LOL

I think I need to add a bit more grit. I'm also mounding the soil about 6 inches to 1 foot above the sidewalk level and putting bricks around it for better drainage.

Any other advice would be appreciated, thanks gang!