Planting Seeds and Pulling Weeds
Now that we have at least one quadrant of the garden in plantable condition, working out in the garden feels kind of normal. Instead of gigantic building projects, there's just some regular maintenance. Don't get me wrong: there's still plenty of big, dirty digging projects and a whole boatload of cleanup to be done, but on an average Tuesday it is possible to make a loop around the beds to monitor progress, put in another succession planting, and pull a weed or two. This might, then, be a boring progress report, but it feels really great to be enjoying regular gardening again!
Planting Seeds
Last night we finished the last little bit of bed prep in the first quadrant, so today I was able to plant out the second cold frame. To make things easy, the planting scheme is exactly the same as in the first cold frame: arugula, kale, mache, mustard greens, carrots, beets, turnips, mesclun, and spinach. These new seeds are about 10 days behind the first planting, which should help us prolong the harvest farther into the fall.
We also put up the second pea trellis for pea netting, and planted the second round of peas (shell and snap), beans, and some more kale, mache, mesclun, and carrots outside a cold frame. Things are not as organized as I would like: we kind of just put the seeds anywhere that was ready to be planted, so the second crops of any given veggie are nowhere near the first. This is something we will plot out much more carefully for the big spring planting next year, but for now we'll just get what we get.
Pulling Weeds
I am continuing the crazy OCD task of pulling crabgrass out of the new lawn. Each day I do a section across the short way for one fence-width. And believe me, that is plenty. The barefoot-in-the-grass part is still nice, but I'm a little stiff from being hunched over for so long, and I think there is no hope for getting the dirt out from under my index fingernails.
The major "weeding" of the evening was digging out some of the mess in that one small section of the perennial border that isn't finished. We dug out the lacecap hydrangea, which wasn't too terrible. It was a big, full plant, but we didn't really like it much. It's our garden, and we'll do what we please. While hacking away at this perfectly acceptable plant, Kirk decided that we wouldn't be very good gods, seeing as how we'd be likely to send floods and famines more often than called for just to get back to the creating-in-our-own-image part. Also, it was way too close to the house for its size.
The second issue was a wisteria that was all tangled up in (sigh) a really beautiful white peony. I was hoping to save the peony, but the wisteria roots were so tangled in it that we couldn't save it. Also, that wisteria root is utterly massive:
It's like a tree trunk, but goes down about two feet (at least--we haven't found the bottom). This photo, by the way, is after Kirk chopped at it with an axe. Here's the pit he had to dig to make that happen:
This picture doesn't really do justice to the amount of digging that occurred tonight, and it's not done yet.
If you don't know anything about what a bitch wisteria is, you can google it. It'll grow from pretty much any bit of root left behind, and can choke full-grown trees. The spring we moved in, the vine in question was growing up between the storm windows and regular windows on the porch (windows we replaced last summer, so we're not about to let that happen to the new ones).
Well, I don't think that giant root is coming out, although we'll see if it dries out a bit (now that it's exposed) so we can hack at it some more. If (probably when) that doesn't work, we'll score the root and paint it over with an herbicide, wrap it in some our handy-dandy black plastic, and bury it again. If new shoots still come out, I have read that cutting them back immediately to the ground should help starve the remaining root. Hopefully that will work, but the internet has me kind of terrified that it won't. Stupid google.
Planting Seeds
Last night we finished the last little bit of bed prep in the first quadrant, so today I was able to plant out the second cold frame. To make things easy, the planting scheme is exactly the same as in the first cold frame: arugula, kale, mache, mustard greens, carrots, beets, turnips, mesclun, and spinach. These new seeds are about 10 days behind the first planting, which should help us prolong the harvest farther into the fall.
We also put up the second pea trellis for pea netting, and planted the second round of peas (shell and snap), beans, and some more kale, mache, mesclun, and carrots outside a cold frame. Things are not as organized as I would like: we kind of just put the seeds anywhere that was ready to be planted, so the second crops of any given veggie are nowhere near the first. This is something we will plot out much more carefully for the big spring planting next year, but for now we'll just get what we get.
Pulling Weeds
I am continuing the crazy OCD task of pulling crabgrass out of the new lawn. Each day I do a section across the short way for one fence-width. And believe me, that is plenty. The barefoot-in-the-grass part is still nice, but I'm a little stiff from being hunched over for so long, and I think there is no hope for getting the dirt out from under my index fingernails.
The major "weeding" of the evening was digging out some of the mess in that one small section of the perennial border that isn't finished. We dug out the lacecap hydrangea, which wasn't too terrible. It was a big, full plant, but we didn't really like it much. It's our garden, and we'll do what we please. While hacking away at this perfectly acceptable plant, Kirk decided that we wouldn't be very good gods, seeing as how we'd be likely to send floods and famines more often than called for just to get back to the creating-in-our-own-image part. Also, it was way too close to the house for its size.
The second issue was a wisteria that was all tangled up in (sigh) a really beautiful white peony. I was hoping to save the peony, but the wisteria roots were so tangled in it that we couldn't save it. Also, that wisteria root is utterly massive:
It's like a tree trunk, but goes down about two feet (at least--we haven't found the bottom). This photo, by the way, is after Kirk chopped at it with an axe. Here's the pit he had to dig to make that happen:
This picture doesn't really do justice to the amount of digging that occurred tonight, and it's not done yet.
If you don't know anything about what a bitch wisteria is, you can google it. It'll grow from pretty much any bit of root left behind, and can choke full-grown trees. The spring we moved in, the vine in question was growing up between the storm windows and regular windows on the porch (windows we replaced last summer, so we're not about to let that happen to the new ones).
Well, I don't think that giant root is coming out, although we'll see if it dries out a bit (now that it's exposed) so we can hack at it some more. If (probably when) that doesn't work, we'll score the root and paint it over with an herbicide, wrap it in some our handy-dandy black plastic, and bury it again. If new shoots still come out, I have read that cutting them back immediately to the ground should help starve the remaining root. Hopefully that will work, but the internet has me kind of terrified that it won't. Stupid google.
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