When I moved here in 2013, this area was completely covered with St. Augustine grass, or at least it seemed to be so. At some point I noticed a small patch of bahiagrass near the northern end, and it grew much faster than the surrounding grass. In the photo below, you can see the bahiagrass inflorescences and its much taller blades than those of the surrounding St. Augustine, even though the whole area was mowed at the same time. It also easy to see that I hadn't trimmed my hedges in a long time!
In January, 2015, I bought four trees: a Meyer lemon a fig a pomegranate, and a satsuma. That March I put, from front to back, the lemon, pomegranate, and fig trees in the west front yard, and the satsuma went in the west yard.
I had never grown fruit trees before, and I didn't create a bed for them. I just threw some leaves over the areas where I dug holes and put in the trees.
Based on what I read online, I cut the pomegranate tree down to a foot-tall stump. I took these photos a while after I planted the trees, and by then the stump had one small branch.
I was pretty negligent of the fruit trees in 2015. By March 2016, I had put a little homemade mulch around their trunks, but not nearly enough.
By April 14, I had put a ring of bricks around the pomegranate, and more thoroughly removed the bahiagrass from the dirt and mulch inside the ring. The grass's rhizomes are very thick, tough, and interwoven. It was not possible simply to pull them out like one would with St. Augustine grass stolons. I had to meticulously dig it all out without damaging the pomegranate roots.
By May 14, 2016, I had put plastic barriers around all three of the fruit trees and surrounded the barriers with bricks in a circle, two bricks high. The Meyer lemon tree had a modest number of lemons growing on it.
The fig tree was growing and producing a small number of figs.
After I completed the new beds, I filled them with oak catkins mixed with assorted lawn and roof gutter debris. The next fall I came across some bags of pine needles in the neighborhood and covered all three beds with them.
On January 6 and 7, 2017, the temperatures got down to the low 20's at night. This killed the Meyer lemon tree, but the others survived. Following the advice of my neighbor across the street, I removed the lemon tree without replacing it with anything so the fig tree would have more room to grow.
