stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

... it’s aggravating ...

heh, no kidding... the even more annoying thing is that this field south of us was a very nice and not at all a weedy field before they started farming it again and that when they abandoned farming it a few years ago it was left in such a bad shape that i've had to be out there mowing it to prevent some of the thistles in the back corner from spreading more seeds. if they'd have mowed or turned it under a a few times they could have avoided several acres of thistles. now they are established and it doesn't sound like they are going to control it other than mowing once a year in August which is well past the thistle seeding stage... we have a lot of rock piles as decorations and also a lot of edges which capture wind blown seeds so this past gardening season so far i've had to move rocks to get at those sprouting thistles. it makes for a lot of heavy work that takes time for just a single weed.

 

[flowerbug]

a few pictures from June of the north garden thyme.

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

@flowerbug wow exceptional gearing and blooms.

 

[flowerbug]

ok, peppers picked and mostly processed or passed along and no rains last night so back to weeding today for a few hours before it gets too hot and muggy.

 

[flowerbug]

the other day, putting weeds on the weed pile, i noticed that yet again there was the pathway through that looked like some animal had eaten or pushed through. i was hoping it was a cat or rabbit... rabbut it was really a groundhog...

today i saw it out eating some clover so i managed to get the air gun back out, open the patio door and the screen without getting it too alerted and then it happened to turn away so i could lift the gun and take aim carefully and got the lucky shot i needed. it did not suffer.

i have not kept count of how many i've buried this season so far but six to eight sounds about right. one more to be buried in the morning unless the SFCF (semi-feral cat family) comes along in the night and removes it - it's rather large - i don't think it will be gone.

 

[flowerbug]

today was a nearly perfect day, breezy, not too hot or humid, so i took two rounds to finish one garden i was working on clearing again of weeds that have overtaken it. a lot of crab grasses that were impossible to pull easily, i had to use a rather dull shovel to try to get them scraped off the surface, plus of course, a lot of purslane (that was already dropping some seeds).

the neighboring thyme was not doing very well either having been mowed and invaded by grasses, clovers, trefoil along with various crab grasses. i don't have that all weeded and won't have time to do that really, but i also am going to back off on mowing it because i think that is introducing weed seeds and also making the thyme too thin and that means it's being too easy to grow weeds in there. i'll try to get back to weeding it better and keeping a closer eye on it. plus scraping the bare dirt part regularly because i sure don't want to have to spend this much time to weed it again. if it is clear i want it kept clear, but the dill we hope will take over and i can weed that instead. the dill did a reasonably good job of keeping other weeds out of where it was growing. tomorrow i'll run the cultivator through it to smooth it out some more, spread the dill seeds around that are ready and give it a shot of water. that should only take a half hour to 45 minutes and then i can move on to the other garden i need to finish up, purslane all through the bean patch, 1/2 to finish. probably will take a few more days. tomorrow's forecast is for even cooler weather and i'm going to be out there again as much as my body will let me get done. we might have visitors so i'm going to have to work around that too but that should be ok. i can rest my body and flap my gums instead for a while and have lunch. we'll see how it goes.

was tired enough to fall asleep after dinner for a few hours so i get to be up with the night owls...

 

[flowerbug]

starting to get some tomatoes. as usual the first ones to ripen tend to be the ones with some BER mixed in so have to check them before eating. see some chewing going on from some critter. perhaps yet another groundhog... hope it was older damage from the one i recently buried and not yet another one. not sure yet...

 

[flowerbug]

as usual a groundhog can do a lot of damage in a short period of time.

i'd just weeded the SE corner garden last week and was mostly through it. there was no groundhog den in there and most of the plants were intact. yesterday after checking the tomatoes (and glad to say no new chewing of those fruits), i started watering and got the tomato garden and the peppers done and switched to watering the SE corner garden and it looked wrong and then i noticed a den dug in there by a groundhog. so i stuck the hose in the hole and let it run while i went back to the garage to get a shovel and my mud shoes so i could fill it back in. i didn't think the groundhog was in that hole because there was no recent disturbance of the soil around there and i may have buried it already. at least i sure hope so! so the den was mostly flooded by the time i got back with the shovel and i filled it in with the dirt it had moved out. that garden looks a bit like a distaster area now... such is life without a good fence...

today i need to get back to weeding again inside the fenced gardens. plenty of tall crab grasses with seeds i should get after before those get spread around even more. untangling them from bean plants is not going to be fun but at least it isn't 90F... will be positive about this. it could be much worse.

 

[digitS']

Still growing Big Beef, FlowerBug? It's only the last few years that they and Early Girls are not in my garden.

Instead, there are heirlooms except for Yellow Jelly Bean F1. There's this "seedsaving" responsibility with heirlooms but they are behaving in their rather idiosyncratic ways regarding growth and production. Concerned about this, I had thought earlier to write about it on the 2024 Tomatoes thread but they are now settling into production mode.

I'm caging their growth this year and crowding them a little. They have still had rampant growth. A couple produced a single fruit and then went back to growing taller and taller! At least now, they are becoming loaded with fruit.

Steve

 

[Marie2020]

My thyme is taking forever to grow in a pots . I read rosemary and lavender are great companions but those dreadful weeds are back again, smothering everything and my back is not into shoveling them out again.

I've potted potatoes earlier , I think around April. But they are still not flowering at all. I fed them tomatoe feed and put grass cuttings on them.so they are well covered

Now wondering what else I can do