Experiment: Night Gardening!

These days when I get home from work, it's already dark. That combined with busy weekends has made me feel like I haven't gardened in forever. Not cool. I decided to do something about the situation and just try gardening in the dark.

My goal was to replace a gnarly looking section of lawn with better-looking and drought-tolerant plants. The results were mixed. The planting went okay and I did manage to replace another 15 square feet of lawn with succulents. But ultimately I didn't enjoy the actual gardening as much as I typically do. Here are some tips in case you try it yourself...

Tip #1 - You NEED a headlamp:
A stationary light was not much of a help. It just cast weird shadows and I had to keep moving it around. The headlamp worked great though. The only drawback was that it was tricky to see the topography of the soil, because the light is always dead ahead. For example, I didn't know how deep a hole was without sticking my trowel in there.


Tip #2 - Some prep probably should happen in the day:

I did not actually tear out the patch of lawn at night. Nor did I even tear the grass out myself. I'm pretty DIY about my garden. But when it comes to tearing out turf, my lower back told me I have to hire someone else. However, since I didn't have to be there, the lawn could be taken out during the day. I also gathered my tools and plants together earlier and stashed them in a wheelbarrow (see above) so I wouldn't have to go digging around looking for things in the dark.

Tip #3 - Keep your night gardening plans relatively simple and easy:

You might notice that the two agaves are in large containers above. One is a 3 gallon and the other is a 5 gallon pot. This was a problem. Digging a good hole is hard. It's hard enough in the daytime, and it's even harder in the dark. Things were exacerbated by a large tree nearby that had roots in the area. Cutting through roots and hard compacted soil was taking so long, that I actually gave up on planting the 5 gallon agave. It's going to have to go somewhere else. The gallon size and smaller plants were a breeze to arrange and plant though. 

Tip #4 - Keep the different bug shift in mind:

Slugs, earwigs, black widows, etc. There are creatures you don't usually see creeping around during the day that are out and about during the night. It can be a good thing, in that you can kill a bunch of slugs while you're out there. But it can also be a bad thing, in that I didn't see that black widow until it was right in front of me.

Tip #5 - You may seem crazy to passers by:

I was working on my front yard right off the sidewalk and I think I might have seemed kind of nuts to people walking by. Whatever. 

Short Winter days, you will not defeat me!

-J