A kitchen with a view - we have a hedge!

This is the story of a hedge and a douche bag pork roast. Let's talk about the hedge first.



In June, we started a project called: A kitchen with a view - the beginning - planning a new project. That is the kitchen window on the right hand side there. It has bathroom glass in it. Bathroom glass. Lovely.



I really really wanted to switch out the glass for clear glass, but I didn't want to have this view, so what to do. I thought it would be awesome to plant a hedge along the wall so that there was something pretty to look at.



I enlisted some help from our handyman. We marked out the width and length of the new bed. We made it 20 inches deep and about 18 feet long.



He rented a concrete cutter at Home Depot for 4 hours. I think it ran about $70 bucks or so.



Then he cut this line. The machine uses water to hose the blade to avoid over heating. This leaves the dust wet. You can see in this picture that there is a thin layer of dust and water covering the concrete here.

This should be swept up before hosing off the concrete. Otherwise you might have an angry neighbor down the street who snitches on you, turns you in to the City in spite seeing you run out and sweep up the bit of dust that turned the water light gray, thus leaving a 3 inch water trail in the gutter by the side of the street. You might build a dam in front of the ocean drain just in case, then the guy from the City might come by to see what was up, while the other neighbors took turns rolling their eyes at the snitching neighbor. I am not saying that happened or anything.

If it happened, it ended happily with the guy from the City almost apologizing on behalf of that neighbor for being a complete douche bag who blew the whole thing out of proportion and commending me for a splendid clean-up job, telling me to stop cleaning already, then discussing the ins and outs of Solvang and just exactly where you can get Danish pork roast around here. Hint: you can buy it here.

So if you don't want to talk about Danish pork roast in the middle of your hedge project you must first sweep, then hose. Lesson learned

Also, our gutter has never been that clean before.  A couple days later the sweeper came by and they didn't even bother sweeping there because it was so clean. LOL.

Let the innocent man cast the first stone. I am blessed to know a neighbor who has never made any mistakes in his life. That must be so awesome!



Our handyman then covered the walkway in plastic before starting to breakup and remove the concrete from the bed.



This was a pretty quick process. He broke it into smaller pieces and put it in his truck and took it to the concrete recycling place. I think we paid 25 bucks to have it recycled. Funny story... I had a couple of quotes on this project and was quoted outrageous prices for having the concrete recycled - even in the hundreds of dollars. Crazy talk.



Then came time to dig the 11 holes for the new hedge. This was by far the most difficult task. The ground was solid as a rock. It took hours. He then put out lines for the the new drip line system. You can see the white plumbing with the black sprinkler heads there. We designed it so that each hedge plant has its own little drip line water delivery system.



Then B and I picked up the plants and we got so lucky that the nursery had just received a batch of really tall, full Carolina Laurels. As I talked about here, we had chosen this plant with a landscape designer because it doesn't get too tall and the roots are very fine, so they don't damage the concrete next to it.

I had been to a couple of nurseries and these 5 gallon hedge plants all cost the same per plant: $39.99, but there was a big difference in how full and tall they were. These were a half times taller and twice as full as the others we had looked at.



Insta-hedge

Our handyman and I collaborated in planting them, making sure to loosening the roots, filling in with fresh nutrient rich soil, then we top filled with the dirt that was excavated. It came out great as the space that the concrete had taken up was a little more than the amount of soil that had to be removed to plant the hedge.

Of course you couldn't really see the hedge from the kitchen window yet, but the flavor was definitely there:



Compared to before:





This morning I mulched around the plant before taking the after photos. The hedge has been in the ground for about two months and it is doing really well. The drip line system works great. I have only hosed the ground a couple of times as they were establishing.

Here is the hedge now.



It's very full and lush right now and it already grew a bit. I put the tallest ones right in front of the kitchen window, because that is where I want coverage the fastest.



It's going to be exiting to get that clear glass put in.

Next: Our new kitchen window - no more bathroom glass