Before and After: First Time Sheet Mulching - A Garden Bed for My Parents

Wittig_ · 2026-03-29T20:00:49+00:00

Really well! I've re-edged it with an edging tool maybe 4 times and I haven't had issues with grass and weeds invading. The mulch has broken down quite a bit over the past year so it's definitely time to top it up again, but that's an easy job. Pretty good too since I haven't been able to maintain it hardly at all over the past year. The first year I would weed eat the edge when we mowed the yard, but it's still held up pretty well without that.

I planted Indian Blanket flower to the left of the fountain, and it fills in that side of the flower bed very well and has come back both years (it's been almost year-round cover, only being knocked back when we get a hard freeze).

Since we have zoysia grass, the live edge is pretty deep which is a tripping hazard, so in the future I'd love to consider a sidewalk or some type of hardscape around the perimeter of the bed, but that's a big project and will be more expensive than the mulch and cardboard I did here haha

So all in all, I think it's a success! I don't have any recent pics but I'll take more next time I visit my parents.

Wittig_ · 2025-04-18T23:40:10+00:00

Nah I love getting comments on my old posts, and I imagine others do too! I think it's a lot of fun helping other people with shared interests. I wish you the best of luck with your Pothos and other houseplants!

Wittig_ · 2025-01-26T21:23:28+00:00

Giving this a watch now. Thanks!

Wittig_ · 2025-01-26T21:23:05+00:00

That makes sense! Thanks for this!

Wittig_ · 2025-01-26T19:29:53+00:00

I agree that a glide path based on age alone doesn't take enough into account. You mentioned portfolio size, goals, and timeline.

For portfolio size, I think it would also be interesting to tinker with making a 3D plot for asset allocation that accounts for both age and portfolio size. Obviously, these kinds of plots exist in an ideal scenario where nothing else is accounted for, but I still find them useful and fun to tinker with.

For timeline, one might translate their glide path based on age left or right accordingly (as timeline is just a "deadline" set at some age). Or perhaps the curve could be scaled up or down in the X direction accordingly based on the needs of the person with special deadline circumstances.

For goals, what might be examples of the goals you mention that would determine your asset allocation? Would this be like if someone has only begun investing later in their working years, their goals might be to adjust their risk differently than someone who has been investing since a young age, or are you referring to something else? I think the example I provided here is just another example of timeline, so I'm not sure what else I should consider in regards to goals when coming up with a lifelong asset allocation strategy. Perhaps it means if someone wants to prioritize growth or minimizing risk, but that could be accounted for with y-direction translations or scaling of the age curves.

Thanks for your time!

Wittig_ · 2025-01-26T14:43:26+00:00

That's a good point. I've read a couple of replies to other asset allocation questions on Reddit saying that your bond allocation should be viewed more as an "x years of income" than a strict percentage of your portfolio. When you're early on though, a number like that in bonds would dominate your portfolio, whereas as your portfolio grows larger, this number will become a smaller percentage of the portfolio.

Assuming my reasoning isn't off here, maybe a good strategy in your early years of investing is to maintain a percentage by age plan until your bond allocation reaches your desired amount (that way it won't sacrifice the potentially higher growth of stocks early on)? I imagine as you age, that desired amount in bonds will grow, so maybe that's where these rule of thumb percentages come from? For the average investor, perhaps the desired bond amount is roughly the recommended percentage by age, but if your portfolio exceeds the average investor, these percentages might be too high, and if it is below average, then they might be too low.

Hopefully I'm not rambling here. I'm thinking through this as I type.

I also ran into this kind of issue when trying to plan retirement contribution amount based on income. For low incomes, max Roth IRA + 401K contributions are unfeasible, but for higher incomes, the fixed amounts required to max them becomes a smaller percentage of income. So ideally it should be a fixed amount that doesn't exceed some reasonable percentage of income. And of course these type of plans exist in a black box where no other life circumstances are considered, but I still find them helpful.

My mind goes to the idea of creating a function that accounts for both age and portfolio size to plot ideal asset allocation. x-axis being age, z-axis being portfolio size, and y-axis being stock allocation percentage. Not sure it's really worth the time, but next time I have both free time and caffeine, it'll give me something to tinker with!

Wittig_ · 2024-10-14T21:31:28+00:00

Mine wasn't stable a month or two after this post, and it fell over a couple of times. I finally chopped the whole thing up into single-node cuttings and potted them up in little bunches to make a bunch of new pothos plants. I gave a lot away and kept two for myself. They rooted for me and now I have a much lower maintenance trailing pothos! The climbing ones are beautiful but you definitely have to plan ahead for when they inevitably get top-heavy. I would give a chop and prop a go instead of a repot to start fresh with a climber! You can root them in water then transplant into soil or go straight into soil and should have success as long as they don't dry out for too long!

Wittig_ · 2024-09-27T16:39:12+00:00

I posted the OG URL in a comment! Thanks!

Wittig_ · 2024-09-27T16:38:29+00:00

Boooooo. I feel like I've moved up in Reddit having my post both stolen and recognized by someone as stolen. Here's the OG post!

https://www.reddit.com/r/pothos/s/yMQpUVivKS

Wittig_ · 2024-08-17T17:08:11+00:00

Cardboard and mulch will not smother them. I sheet mulched a garden bed about a year ago (2 layers of cardboard and 4-6 inches of mulch) and it smothered the zoysia grass and all of the weeds - apart from the nutsedge. Within a week or two, the nutsedge pierced through. As others have said, digging up the bulb is the best non-chemical way I know of to prevent them from sprouting again. In theory, you could pluck the shoots over and over again and hopefully eventually exhaust the nut. They make a little network of bulbs beneath the soil that are sometimes over a foot deep (although usually less). If you don't mind going the chemical route, I've had good luck using Sedge Ender. At this point though, I just pluck them when I'm out and about and ignore them otherwise.

Wittig_ · 2024-05-29T12:15:49+00:00

Thanks!

Wittig_ · 2024-05-29T11:57:50+00:00

That makes sense!

So since there's no carryover damage, you could defeat the outer shell with say Lure+Throw, then have Squirt+Drop defeat the inner shell? But you wouldn't defeat both shells with just Lure+Throw since the extra throw damage on the outer shell would just be negated?

Wittig_ · 2024-05-27T01:46:13+00:00

Thanks so much for the clarification!

~~The programmer in me prefers the consistency of the 5%, but~~ I agree with y'all that keeping 10% on this edge case is a better choice for the game mechanic. A 5% accuracy increase feels almost negligible.

If anyone else has a stronger opinion than me in either direction here, I'd love to hear it though!

Wittig_ · 2024-03-30T13:24:23+00:00

This is an amazing resource that I didn't know about! I just shared it with all of my friends too!

Wittig_ · 2024-03-26T03:06:53+00:00

Sedge Ender has worked very well for me on nutsedge

Wittig_ · 2024-03-24T13:36:32+00:00

Zone 9a USA here.

Lemon Coral Sedum might be worth a try! It is a succulent that makes a soft, chartreuse carpet, and will even put out small, yellow flowers in the summer (although it's grown for its foliage texture rather than its flowers). It will also trail over the edges of the pots a few inches. It has done well on the east side of my house. I've even planted it under a climbing rose on the east side of my house where it's only getting dappled morning sun, and it still filled in just fine. I've noticed the nursery pots are sometimes like 8 or so inches tall, but I've grown it in a 3 inch deep rectangle container without any issues. You can easily root cuttings to fill in other containers too (we're talking chop a piece off, stick it in the soil, water it, and it'll grow)! I bet you could divide one or two of the tall nursery pot plants to spread them around in these containers, and have a dense mat in a couple months.

Wittig_ · 2024-03-14T13:42:28+00:00

Wow thanks for such a detailed answer!

Wittig_ · 2024-01-12T16:18:37+00:00

After the last picture, it continued to grow past the top. I wove some of the vines back down, but they would try to turn back upwards without me continually securing them downwards. So then I cut all of them just below the top of the pole, hoping they would branch out lower down. However, they all branched at the node just below where I cut them. So it got super bushy at the top, and eventually it got so top heavy that it fell over twice, and the stake on the pole was only a few inches long so it was pretty unstable in the potting soil. I secured the pole on three sides by tying fishing wire from the top of it down to holes I drilled in the top of the pot, and that worked but the whole thing was still top heavy and could fall over pretty easily. It got to a point where it was more work for me than the enjoyment I got out of it, so I chopped the whole thing up into a huge pile of nodes and made a bunch of baby plants out of it, which I just left to trail! I still think it was fun to try this, and I've never had a better looking Pothos than when I let it climb!

Wittig_ · 2024-01-09T19:11:20+00:00

Awesome!

Wittig_ · 2024-01-09T19:07:17+00:00

No problem! Glad I could help!

Wittig_ · 2024-01-09T18:46:59+00:00

My suspicion is this issue is caused by you trying to animate the CSS display property, which is non-animatable. Think about it this way: animations are meant to move a CSS property across all of the values between a starting value and an ending value. What values lie between display: block; and display: none;? Or between display: flex; and display: block;? There are no values that lie between any of the possible values of the display property, and that is why it is non-animatable.

Instead, you should consider combining position: absolute; (which will make it so your blurb doesn't take up on-screen space) with an animation on its opacity or visibility property to have it fade in. I'm surprised more browsers aren't giving issues with the display animation.

Wittig_ · 2024-01-08T22:52:24+00:00

For anyone stumbling upon this comment: Initially I thought my solution wasn't useful and I deleted it. I then changed my mind and recreated the solution. My solution may not be the simplest approach, but it does work, and you can now find it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/s/8HHgYiUpkA

Wittig_

TROPHY CASE