Personally I think it would depend on how many beds, how large they are & soil type. If you have poor soil, you are going to have to edge your beds as often as you mow. I don't have much experience with conifers, but I have a lot of experience in gardening in general. Before when I had just a single 40' bed in the front of my house I wanted the perfect edge. I took my shovel and dug a the perfect trench and it looked great! A month or so later the edge filled in because of the drainage. I dug it a couple more times that year until winter came and had the same results. It took maybe 2-3 hours each time. The next year I went and got a gas edger (the kind you push, not the string trimmer kind) It dug the edge in about a quarter of the time of shoveling which was nice. However, I still had the same result. Last year I put a retaining wall in it's place and the problem was fixed. This year I started collecting conifers... I have 7 new large beds in my backyard. Most of them are 50' long & I plan to add at least 1-2 new beds a year. I'd be crazy to go out each month with a shovel to get the perfect edge even if I had good drainage. Actually, my roundup edge is a lot straighter than what my shovel or edger could have done. Whaas- I use roundup around the edges only when the grass starts to creep over the mulch beds. My grass is the spreading type that grows at an angle and I can't mow it once it crawls over the mulch beds. Other than that, my edge looks similar to yours. Although I only like to apply a thin layer around the edge so the grass holds the mulch back from spilling into the yard. This way the mower can go over the edge and it won't toss any mulch into the yard. I would say what you need is to rent a professional edger each spring at your local store. See link for the type our local place offers... Picture from camera phone taken today: Here is a link that might be useful: EZ Trench

Getting back to the coffee grounds thing... I found the FAQ post here on Garden Web about grounds. The link is below. Seems like the grounds are "green" compost - beneficial but not acidic. I'm sure this will be a subject of further debate. In fact, when I did a search of Garden Web for "coffee grounds," the search engine came back with 38 PAGES of material. Yikes! I'd keep adding the grounds. They will help build the soil. I've found that Western clay is not so bad once you get some organics into it. Six years ago, when I bought the house, my "garden" was subgrade, compacted construction backfill. No even thistle was growing! Horrid. I amended with Back to Earth cottonboll compost (twigs and stems from the ginning process... great stuff!). I still have clay, but the texture is so much better and now the worms do my "double digging" for me! I forgot where I read it, but there was an observation about soils: It's easier to change the plants to suit the soil than to change the soil to suit the plants. I'll see what I can find about trees that like alkaline clay. In my crappy soil, I grow crabapple 'red jade,' dwarf blue spruce 'Bakerii,' some fast growing Austrees (willow hybrid - kind of weedy but I needed an instant screen), Western catalpa, weeping Norwegian pine, Tanyosho pine and a 'Twisty Baby' locust. Trees I've killed include a weeping sequoia, scots pine, dwarf alberta spruce (till I planted them in full shade). Chokecherry (native) is languishing on my clay hillside. Yet the pinyon trees I transplated there are happy. A $10 Austrian pine is happy with 2 gallons of water weekly. Yet I lost about half of the Rocky Mountain Juniper seedlings I planted as an experiment. Sometimes, it doesn't make sense. Your aspen trees will need a bunch of water. I shovel pruned mine after only two years. I couldn't/wouldn't provide the water it needed to thrive. Plus the autumn leaves didn't turn the rich golden color you seen in the high country. Couple that with the fact that aspen trees sucker like crazy. Now I admire them from afar. Maybe a good thing to do is to tour the neighborhood / surrounding area to see what other kinds of trees are thriving. Here is a link that might be useful: What's the deal with coffee grounds

I have a unit in a high rise condominium which has banned the use of plastic tubing to a compression fitting from a fixture to the fixture stop value. I imagine it is because of incidents like I have experienced with a 3 story house (described below). Particularly insidious is the tendency to develop a very small leak which isn't detected in the room where the fixture is located because it is too small and leaks into the wall cavity causing damages far removed from the source of the leak which make it hard to locate the source. I am in the processing of cleaning up the mess from a long continuing and until recently not discovered leak from one of these connections from a sink fixture (hot water side) on the 3rd floor of a 3 story house with basement. Apparently for years, there was a slow drop, too slow and limited to be noticed as the water just seeped into the wall behind the fixture. On the first floor there was a bulge in the wall (interior) below the indoor unit of a mini-split system install near the ceiling, so some evidence of water where it shouldn't be, but, I suspect the lines from the mini-system and it didn't seem worth tearing open the wall to investigate. Over time (years) the leak seems to have increased and I found water accumulated in the basement floor (concrete) near where the boilers, hot water heater and water softener were located. I suspected first the hot water heater (so shut if off at the water inlet), then the water softener discharge as the floor drain had blocked. The water heater was turned back on. Possibly the surge of water in the lines (as often happens when water has been off for a long time) may have cause a water hammer effect which increased the leakage. In the end, I with a second floor ceiling collapsed exposing the underside of the third floor, I could see that it was a plumbing leak. It still took some time to find the bathroom (there were two above the ceiling with the problem because there was never a trace of water on the bathroom floor. All the water had leaked into the back of the cabinet at the seam between the cabinet bottom shelf and the cabinet back wall and from there into the wall. That was the most troublesome thing about the leak. It just wasn't noticeable until the ceiling collapsed. The most obvious suspect, the mini-split system located just above where the damage was initially evident had nothing at all to do with the leak.

I went to the hardware store after work today to learn about some of the supplies and see what I am going to be working with. I have a couple of questions. 1. If I were to go the grass killing route, what percentage of Glyphosate should I be using? I have seen 40%, 20% and 8%. 1a. Any suggestions on killing weeds in bush mulch beds? I am now seeing some that are sprouting. The store had some products that solely killed weeds without the grass killing label. Would general weed killer suffice? 2. If killing the grass, after the labeled amount of time is up for further lawn work to be performed, do I have to till/break up the soil with a bow rake? Or some other ground puncturing tool? 3. Seeding - what type of seed/brand do people suggest if I go Tall Fescue? This type of grass seems to be the most common, but I was a little overwhelmed (for lack of a better term) when I saw that seed bags were mixtures of seed that also included Ryegrass and KBG along with the Fescue 3a. Should I supplement the seed with a layer of hay or additional netting? (Some of the old hay and netting has not disappeared yet from the builder seed.) 3b. Since it is also mid-September, should I consider a seasonal type of seed such as a specific Fall seed? The reps at the hardware store suggested that with the season being so late (is it already?), that I should just keep my lawn the way it is and just spread whatever type of seed he was showing me at the time. 3c. What is the most optimal way to seed (could also be answered with the questions above)? Should I just purchase a spreader and apply or do the additional processes mentioned above need to be performed? 4. If not killing the grass, can I just add seed and respray my lawn with more weed kill? What brands are suggested? 5. Mulch beds - how often should I overturn the mulch? I read that at least once a season and apply 0.5-1 inch of additional mulch yearly or around that time frame. 6. Any suggestion on brand/type of spray applicator? For performing whole lawn maintenance, I was looking at the hose attachable handles with reservoirs to hold lawn care product like herbicides, etc... I could also supplement that with 1-2 gallon pump sprayer just in case. Sorry for the plethora of questions but I am still in the learning phase before I take action. I would plan to do some maintenance beginning Saturday afternoon if possible and continue it throughout the week coming straight home after work.