My round raised garden is growing things, beautifully. About 10% of them are actually what I planted there, or so far, daylilies and a few balloon flower seeds. I expect no balloon flowers from those seeds since the night after scattering them carefully at a very shallow depth as required, we had a royal downpour and they slid into a hollow. Now invisible, they will soon be covered by a couple bags of black dirt to fill that hollow, so bearded iris and daffodil bulbs can go in there.
Oh well, them's the breaks. They promised to be fancy in a variety of colors, not just blue, and some double blossoms. (How on earth does a balloon flower get double blossoms?) I may check a garden center next spring and see if fancy starter plants are available. If not, well, one plant did get transplanted and is thriving so far, just in a different location.
The daylilies are thriving, as daylilies do. A few are just tiny shoots so far, but most are six to eight inches tall, sometimes multiple shoots from a single root clump. I'm not really expecting blossoms next summer, but we'll see. The greenery will fill in wonderfully regardless. That's good because the rain and sun have combined to produce a bounty of weeds.
Some are grass. Some are flat, spreading, and waxy, nothing I can identify. Most, however, are either green or red versions of what we kids used to pluck and bite into, calling it sourgrass. We loved it, or perhaps loved to hate it, depending on the kid. I suppose if I research it I'll discover whether it indeed is a relative of shamrocks, which it looks like.
But hey, I'm busy. The weeds need to come out. Like now. While we have a few dry days in a row so they can die before the next expected rainy days.
The bed is raised and larger than I can reach across to the middle of. I don't kneel any more, not since my knee replacements. Kneeling hurts. I'm just not into that kind of pain. So while the plants are still tiny, with matching sized roots, they need to go away. Heaven awaits... for the plants that receive the nutrients that leach into the soil as the weeds decompose. But after pulling up half a dozen, and noticing how many hundreds of them had sneaked into the open spaces, something better had to come along.
Online shopping it is. The garden center shopping season is coming to an end, but all kinds of tools are available from a variety of overstocked locations. I had a lot of choices, including styles of tools I'd never seen before. I know about 5 garden tools, not even getting into those needed for harvest and pruning. There's the shovel, the hoe, the rake, and on the smaller level, the trowel and cultivator. Or as Mom called the last two, the digger and scratcher. Those names made perfect sense to us kids. I had a trowel, even with a serrated edge on one side. Fancy! I needed some sort of a cultivator. With a long enough handle that I didn't need to either kneel or bend way down for an hour... sort of the same thing as I think about it. I also didn't need to trample the garden, as densely planted as I plan for it to be.
I actually wound up with a thing with an "L" shaped flat hook on the end, sharpened on both sides. It called itself a sidewalk edger. Who needs to edge the sidewalk? But the blade should work either with a push or a pull through the surface dirt, either to pull weeds out or loosen dirt and expose roots to dry. Or both at the same time, actually.
It arrived in a disappointingly short package. Further examination showed two pieces which screwed together into the advertised length, a useful adaption for shipping economically. It sat for a couple days while I got the house ready for a couple batches of company to see. This morning, having put it off as long as I could, I pulled it out and gave it a try.
There is a learning curve. Push-pull is needed, repeated a couple times or more depending on the age/size of the weeds. Established grass needed to be actually removed once the dirt was loosened. The rest could be left on the ground, roots in the air. The tool was perfect for the task, as the spacing between plants at the moment is a bit wider than the blade so I don't hurt the wanted plants. With highs expected from the upper 70s to the upper 80s before we get rain, what's left should be nicely dead by then. The top inch of soil is already dry since the last rain, so good thing the daylily roots go much deeper.
The iris will need different treatment. As will some of the spring-flowering bulbs arriving sometime next month. The garden's center is low, even with the soil washed down in after the first planting, so bagged black dirt will be needed, and as that goes in and gets patted down, the iris corms will get shallowly planted and everything well watered. So just after the next rains then. Any early arriving bulbs can go in at the same time. It would be nice to get those fairly soon so I don't have to trample the garden one extra time, right? Right now iris corms are in a sealed bag inside the fridge, having been soaked overnight after being dug out from their old home and their tops cut back. They will be fine for a while. Even iris seeds are in the fridge, per grower's instructions, and need wet ground to germinate in before winter. It's become a juggling act.
But it's nice to get a win, and the odd tool I ordered did its job perfectly, in under half an hour this cool morning. I can look forward to easy weeding again as needed, a repeat in this bed, and in the next bare bed yet to be planted. That one will be mixed asiatic lilies and some hollyhocks. I've sprayed the johnson grass in it... three times now. I figure it'll need more just because it's johnson grass. I'm actually hoping those lily bulbs don't arrive for a few more weeks. Weeding that grass out between those would be a royal pain, whatever fancy new tool I have.
If I get bored, there are a couple nasty rose bushes to deal with... permanently. Not to mention the trees growing up inside their middles because of how nasty they are and how the previous owners valued their own intact skin.
This owner does too.
Good thing I've had lots of practice with the loppers and brush killer.
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