Late last year, in my posting of December 1st, I introduced you to the back yard moss. The moss has become such an integral part of my "gardening experience" here, I thought it would be fitting to revisit it one year later.
The native heavy clay soil here in the Willamette valley can be very bothersome (muddy) when it's wet, sticking to shoes and making a general mess. In late August of 2010, I covered the big rose bed with a mixture of compost-sand-topsoil. This not only remedied the mud problem, but it had some unintended consequences. The new top cover and the generally moist valley weather were a perfect combination for the proliferation of moss. You can see the moss taking over in the time series of photos below.
Interestingly enough, the moss itself has become a substrate for a different kind of ground cover, namely liverworts. For people who grow smaller plants, liverworts may be a nuisance. In the case of my rose bed, I find it to be a very pleasant cover. The darker regions in the photo below are areas of liverworts, and I do believe that they will eventually take over the entire bed.
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| The Rose & Moss Garden ("worts" and all) December 1, 2013 |
For those of you that have become fans of my chicken, I stitched up a WIDE photo above, because today he's under the eaves and out of the rain. The chicken really gets around -- he can also be seen in the strip of 3 photos above (hint: in 2012 he is way back there by the shed).
Don't worry that the roses aren't being properly fertilized because I can't work fertilizer into the soil. I do regular foliar feeding with my trusty one gallon spray container.
