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Post by gianna on Mar 12, 2023 20:00:56 GMT -5
Thanks to at least 2 atmospheric rivers, and after years of improving the soil, the weeds have been going bonkers. In places, there are some mustards that are almost as tall as I am. In the front garden I had covered a couple places with black landscape fabric when growth was just starting, and those just need to be pulled off. And other areas that were adequately mulched are OK. But too many places are out of control..... (maybe the drought wasn't all bad) It was dry today, with some sun, so I started major weeding. With more planned tomorrow before the next major rain on Tuesday. I got the bed where the tomatoes will go finished. I got all the weeds either pulled or mainly cut off to leave the roots in the soil, stacked them all on the bed, and covered with a piece of old, thick black plastic. The weeds are a virtual cover crop with even a few earthworms, even after the drought. When it's time to plant the tomatoes, the weeds won't be decomposed yet, but will be flattened and make a nice mulch. Anyone else dealing with weeds yet?
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Weeding
Mar 12, 2023 21:37:02 GMT -5
Post by desertwoman on Mar 12, 2023 21:37:02 GMT -5
Things are just waking up here so there are very few weeds , just a few weedy grasses starting to pop up
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Weeding
Mar 12, 2023 21:49:29 GMT -5
Post by breezygardener on Mar 12, 2023 21:49:29 GMT -5
Anyone else dealing with weeds yet? Not yet, but I'll have to start very soon. One wouldn't believe that there would be a lot of weeds in container gardens, but think again. Weeds & worst-of-all grass seeds seem to blow in from everywhere. The grasses are the worst since they send down deep roots, & one has to be careful not to crack the pot or tub while digging them out.
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Weeding
Mar 12, 2023 23:35:23 GMT -5
Post by pepperhead212 on Mar 12, 2023 23:35:23 GMT -5
Still early here, but in that herb bed I have there are only clovers, and a lot of those elsewhere, too. But eventually, in that bed the mint will be the weed, which I look forward to!
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Post by emmsmommy on Mar 13, 2023 1:19:44 GMT -5
Yes! By the end of the season last year I was out of steam and neglected not only the beds, but the paths as well. Creeping Charlie is by far the worst here, followed by dock and dandelion. Actually I've chosen to let a few dandelions occupy space in the paths because I harvest the blossoms for jelly and the ones in the garden grow twice the size as those in the yard. I missed a few seed heads last year and have actually left a few young ones in the beds with intentions of moving them. So far I have a large garbage can full of weeds and since I'm only dealing with the beds and the area around the edges of each, I predict a few more cans full by the time I get the paths finished. While I took the unclaimed beds that appeared to be the least weedy at the community garden, I have encountered one that rivals anything in my own garden-mock strawberry. Thankfully it was only along the edges of the beds but oh my, the roots are huge and a chore to remove. I suspect I'll spend at least an hour removing them from the second bed, but I also volunteered to try and clear weeds from some of the other unclaimed beds as time permits and some are pretty bad.
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Post by gardendmpls on Mar 13, 2023 5:51:54 GMT -5
Too early for the annual weeding. Hay mulch begins to break down in the spring and they start peeking through. Chickens love it when I do the spring weeding. They get buckets of weedy snacks to give them a boost at the start of heavy egg laying. Right now they are trying to stick their heads out when I open the door so they can grab a few bites of whatever is poking up there.
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Post by Mumsey on Mar 13, 2023 6:07:23 GMT -5
The only "weed" is a single nut sedge grass that grew in the onion flat!!! Never had that happen before. Haven't seen any in the garden. It's completely covered with shredded leaves.
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Post by datgirl on Mar 13, 2023 8:15:54 GMT -5
We have a new cover of snow right now, but creeping charlie is always out there waiting. I'm looking forward to weed pulling weather.
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Post by gianna on Mar 13, 2023 11:39:17 GMT -5
One wouldn't believe that there would be a lot of weeds in container gardens, but think again. I've grown lots in containers, and tend to have lots of weeds come up. I reuse my mix many times, and incorporate lots of organic material into it to keep it nice. Also the winds, and the weeds that have seeds that disperse effectively. Weeds are just very efficient in spreading themselves around - that's why they are weeds, lol. Today's plan after the area dries a bit (showers last night) - To weed in a bed that won't be used for several weeks or longer. First, put down a quick, dry path with landscape fabric that can be taken up after the weather dries. Second, weed in the adjacent long bed, piling weeds from there, and elsewhere to decompose. Maybe even adding some ground city mulch to it. This bed won't be covered until after tomorrow's predicted 3+ inches of rain, or even later since even more is predicted. Sort of a slow composing area, which should be ready when warmer weather plants will be going in. I'm now looking at all these lush 'atmospheric river' weeds as great organic matter to be incorporated into the growing beds. This might be the best crop of weeds I've ever had. When given lemons, make lemonade. edit: an hour later, phase one - putting in a fast and easy path is finished. Just rolling out narrow (folded) landscape fabric, 3ft, so it's not so wet walking around. Plus did some weeding in the bed - clearing enough space to stack the pulled/cut weeds. But it's break time now. Nice hot cuppa tea is very appealing. edit 2: another hour in the garden has passed. Got about 20 feet weeded and stacked with weed bodies. There are about 5 feet to go, but this is enough for now. And I weighed down the temporary fabric path with rocks and stuff. It's still early. Maybe I've got another round in me, but maybe not.
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Weeding
Mar 13, 2023 22:09:22 GMT -5
Post by breezygardener on Mar 13, 2023 22:09:22 GMT -5
I've grown lots in containers, and tend to have lots of weeds come up I once had what looked like a small tuft of grass sprout up in a container in the fall, & foolishly just left it. Come Spring, when I tried to pull it out, its root system had literally taken over the entire pot. When I finally pried it out, pretty much all of the soil in the container came with it!!
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Post by raphanus on Mar 18, 2023 5:41:04 GMT -5
I’m in humid subtropical, heavy weed pressure year round including perennial weeds. When I was younger, I would break my back tilling and hoeing and hauling in tons of mulches, now that I’m having back problems I can’t be doing all that, so I rely more now on cover cropping, I try to make sure there is never any bare ground, if there’s not a vegetable growing in a particular spot, it needs to be filled in with some type of cover crop (crimson clover, perennial clovers, annual ryegrass, wheat, barley, oats, vetch, mint, etc). Nature abhors a vacuum, and with as hot and wet as it is where I live, any bare ground gets immediately colonized by weeds (Bermuda grass, nut sedge, Florida Betony, Carolina geranium, crabgrass, henbit, etc). Lately I’ve been dealing with poison ivy because I put too much leaf mulch underneath my fruit trees. I used to think that mulches stopped weeds, turns out that heavy mulching just selects for different weeds, the weeds that like mulch, like weeds with lots of rhizomes and ones that like cooler damper conditions. I tried that “Back to Eden” garden method that lots of the hippies in Oregon and California swear by, where you bring in tons and tons of cardboard and cover the cardboard with a foot or more of wood chip mulch and it’s supposed to be completely weed free and require no watering or fertilizing. That method works fine in dry climates, but it just turned into a grass-infested mess full of fireants for me. About the only reliable mulch I’ve found to do a good job of suppressing weeds is fresh green pine straw, but not all crops like that, and I’ve removed most of the nearby pines since I’m in a hurricane prone area. I like landscape fabric and heavy silage tarps for weed control, as well as using clear plastic for solarizarion, but that requires some patience, and also more area than I have access to right now, I can’t really afford to have any part of the garden not producing at any point in time, and the silage tarps and clear plastic take a few months to kill all the weeds and that’s a few months where I’m not producing in that spot. I bought some organic herbicide recently, some concentrated vinegar and coconut acids, but they are a bit expensive and tend to just burn back the foliage of weeds, not kill most weeds down to the root, they aren’t systemic. The poison ivy is my big weed problem at the moment, my dogs got all into it and then I cuddle the dogs and I got rash all over my arms, there’s a 20x30 ft carpet of poison ivy under my loquat trees in the deep shade and I’m getting worried about it, accidentally hit some with the lawnmower and weedwhacker last year and started coughing and wheezing. I might have to resort to painting a small amount of systemic herbicide on some of the poison ivy leaves 🙁
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Post by gianna on Mar 18, 2023 17:36:22 GMT -5
That method works fine in dry climates, Here, moisture has so much to do with it. And why this year is so bad in my garden. While all the moisture has made the soil wonderfully alive again, it sure has incentivized the weeds. They are really going for it. (Could be a bad fire year because of it too.) Fortunately in summer when it's totally dry, they are far more manageable, and mulches of any type are very helpful if I take the time to spread them deep enough. Here, about 4-5 inches is the sweet spot. Because of lack of enough water for years, I diverted a couple downspouts into garden areas. It is there that the weeds are particularly bad. As I was weeding in front yesterday - where some of this outflow was directed - I was thinking to myself that there's a path here somewhere... Then I connected the rain dots... The weed I dislike the most is Bermuda grass because if you miss just one bit of deep rhizome, it comes back. Almost all the other weeds in the garden are annuals, mainly Mediterranean grasses and other things evolved in that part of the world, seeds just lying in wait for winter rains. I am making progress however. Just a bit more in one bed, and the tomatoes are going in. But of course there are now 4 more days of rain expected, so that will wait.
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Weeding
Mar 18, 2023 17:42:11 GMT -5
Post by gianna on Mar 18, 2023 17:42:11 GMT -5
I once had what looked like a small tuft of grass sprout up in a container in the fall, & foolishly just left it. Come Spring, when I tried to pull it out, its root system had literally taken over the entire pot. When I finally pried it out, pretty much all of the soil in the container came with it!! When that happens here, I don't pull the grass plant, I cut off the root system just below soil level with a sharp serrated knife, and leave it in the pot to decompose for more organic material. This works for other weeds too, as long as they don't regrow from the base.
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Weeding
Mar 18, 2023 17:50:34 GMT -5
Post by emmsmommy on Mar 18, 2023 17:50:34 GMT -5
I don't have access to enough woodchips at one time to utilize the complete Back to Eden method, but I've had good luck with cardboard under all my beds and paths. Of course if you fail to contain creeping weeds such as creeping Charlie, they'll get established and soon take over. Honestly I think the film was a bit misleading as one gets the idea that they can just spread out a massive pile of wood chips and begin planting. Only a few mentions of putting the chips in the chicken coop first and another mention of using chips with a good deal of leaves and green matter.
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Post by gianna on Mar 18, 2023 17:58:47 GMT -5
I don't actually use wood chips, but rather the free ground city green waste. Wood chips are harder to get, are not easy to walk on, and take longer to decompose as a mulch. The ground green waste decomposes into lovely compost when it gets moist. The downside is you have to spread it more often. At times I've even raked the broken down mulch from the paths into the adjacent bed as an easy compost source.
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