I FINISHED digging up all of the blackberries!!!!!








First time I had to prune my knockout yellow rose. I took my tree lopper to prune, still had my welder's gloves on from the blackberry work and used the lopper to grab and remove the rose canes. I would say 40% dieback, and this is first time I have seen this much. I cleaned up the bed around the clematis, pale pink mini rose, knockout rose, and an undetermined red rose that didn't like this spot, thrived when I moved it, but got surrounded by poison ivy so I moved it back last year. Apparently it grew nice roots and LIKES the original spot. I will be putting down PREEN around ALL of these today so that I can enJOY them this summer. I cannot tell you HOW that little rose has survived being shaded out by a sapling in the corner (I dug down and sawed off and covered with cardboard, dirt and a small, broken piece of cement paver) AND by blackberries canes and bindweed for several years! When your DH ends up in the hospital several times in a year (2016), gardening and maintenance gets put on the backburner.
I hand dug with my spade and dug up and removed as much bindweed runners as I could find. Some of the bed really needed digging so I pulled out my tiller and prepped the bed for today's pepper planting. It is ~4-5' x 20'
While tilling I revealed several bindweed roots which I tossed in the trash.
Between the pouring in the morning and the T-storm in the afternoon I planted 17 bell peppers, a 20' row of ~80 Indian corn, a row of okra, a row of black beans, 7 cucumber plants and 5 mounds of Blue Doll pumpkin, from seeds that saved from last year. They were well watered twice yesterday!
I found more bindweed to dig up and dispose of. I have a used spray bottle to spot hit the bindweed that managed to survive my digging and I am NOT AFRAID to do so.
I also dug down, sawed off and covered up 5 saplings trying to make a go of it in the gravel driveway behind my trucks, and sawed off suckers from a tree that has GOT to be killed off this year, right on the north edge of the driveway.
Another first, I had to prune back 1/4 of my Rose of Sharon which was dead. The rest looks healthy.
Last winter was brutal in many ways.