What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Trish Stretton]

I cleared the next two paths alongside the beds of weeds, levelled them and laid weedmat down to keep them clear while I get other stuff done; like pave the path in front of the courtyard gate.
This week, I got my AFB inspection done as well as getting the hive split....so now I have two hives.

 

[seedcorn]

Took the shredder to the garden. I have a great stand of grasses to fight next spring...oh joy.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

Took the shredder to the garden. I have a great stand of grasses to fight next spring...oh joy.

I love my chipper shredder but it is a loud dusty process.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I did nothing.

 

[Trish Stretton]

I sorted out all the too thin paving (concrete rubble) and brought it back down to the parking area.
I decided to use this where the ground was seriously compacted and had a good layer of crusher dust.

So far, I have the corner between the house and the big back gate paved and am working on the path to the courtyard.
I did have to move my half wine barrel that had the dwarf Mandarin and a few thyme plants in it...Good thing too cos it is so old its starting to fall apart.

I didnt think to take pics so I will tomorrow. I am only about a third of the way along the path though, even though its only 3 metres long...its tough scraping crusher dust and gap 60 stones out of the way.

 

[flowerbug]

Took the shredder to the garden. I have a great stand of grasses to fight next spring...oh joy.

you know my mantra by now with grasses! smother them! smush 'em, turn 'em under, cardboard, cardboard, cardboard, newspapers, dirt, anything really that will break down eventually.

can you turn it under now with a deep plow blade?

well, now, here is heavy mud, but perhaps you have more sandy soil there....

 

[seedcorn]

I garden a sand/gravel mix. Burying grasses is of now value as too many roots and seeds to germinate. I mulch garden with straw and that has little affect on grasses. What I should do, I won’t.

 

[flowerbug]

I garden a sand/gravel mix. Burying grasses is of now value as too many roots and seeds to germinate. I mulch garden with straw and that has little affect on grasses. What I should do, I won’t.

if you could do what i do you'd find quite an improvement.

i dig trenches about a foot and a half and then scrape the surface and as many roots of the weeds as i can into the bottom of that trench. and then i put down some cardboard or newspaper over that and bury it. very little of that will come up again. it works.

as for once you have it cleared and want to keep it clear, keep hitting it with a strap hoe before the weeds have much chance to grow, spread roots and seeds around. if you are consistent enough you can manage a half acre of gardens without that much effort.

in the early fall, if you can turn under the garden and plant winter rye or winter wheat that will give any weeds competition and you won't have such a problem in the spring. turn it all under in the spring again several weeks before you have to plant.

yes, i know, i do these things in a lot of gardens with a lot of things in the way. if i had one half acre of open ground that i didn't have to go around all this stuff i could cut my time down to about 1/4 of what i currently spend. so perhaps i could manage a whole acre? dunno, never been able to do what i want.

still i know these methods will work as i use them all the time.

yesterday i put up one garden of 200sq ft in less than an hour. some weeds, there always are, but i didn't have to dig up or turn the whole garden. just dig one trench and bury all the garden debris plus some weeds and the neighboring cosmos after i'd harvested the seeds.

 

[digitS']

I once lived where there was a vacant lot across the alley from my home. Vacant until I had negotiated with the owner, who lived about 20 miles away. After I had turned about as many square feet of that ground into a garden, my attention turned to the alley.

Well it wasn't quite an alley as most people might imagine. Little used, the next neighbors to the north had joined their fences across it. The alley ended behind my garage. My neighbor to the west used it as access to her garage and I hadn't used it for anything. It was a patch of mostly quackgrass unused for several years. The old tire tracks became my paths and the center, another garden bed.

Well, I wish that it had been all quackgrass. I sorted out the plants from the soil and buried roots and all under newspaper and about a foot of dirt. Eliminated that perennial grass but some of the roots were morning glory (bind weed). Fighting that stuff continued but, I was rid of the grass and had a garden bed with midday sun right on the other side of my backyard fence.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

i forgot to mention that it really does help too to scrape the surface layer of soil in a weedy garden and also bury that with the weeds/roots before putting down the cardboard or newspapers. all those seeds will then be out of the germination zone unless they are disturbed again. in the meantime the worms, fungi, bacteria, etc have a chance at them.

the entire north garden was full of oxalis for the past few years and also the surface was full of seeds from the birdsfoot trefoil. if you know either of those two plants you know how many seeds they can drop. this past summer i used the above methods to renovate and clear that garden patch and get it back under control. i have had some of each plant trying to regrow but vastly fewer amounts of seedlings than i would have had if i'd just left it and tried to manage it some other ways. scraping the surface with a flat bladed shovel or skimming with the stirrup hoe and scraping that into the trenches or holes with a hoe all worked well. i did that entire garden in about 2 weeks time (if you put all those short spells i was working in there together over a month and a half together).

since then i have been able to scrape that entire garden in a few hours time (every other week or so i check it). that's a huge improvement over trying to weed it otherwise or as i was keeping it before. at the same time we also moved a lot of plants out of the way so future maintenance will be easier. it will always be a lot of work in that garden, but i like the process of that anyways and now i've got it back into production and ready to plant some crops in next season. finally...