I don’t want you to think my life is all beer and skittles.
This pile of weeds is 12 metres long, 1.5 metres wide and about 0.5 metres high and I pulled up every bloody one of them!!! (Maus picked them up and put them in the trailer.) We have finished weeding one rose garden. I am so lucky, my darling sister, Sandra, and her friend, Merle, weeded another bed for me whilst we were away.
I know we should have taken more preventive action before we went away, like mulching, but we ran out of time.
The weeds are lined up as the first layer for my second vegie bed. The first one, which you can see on the left, needs to be topped up but I can’t do it at the moment. Just before we left, I noticed that some of my garlic was beginning to shoot so I planted them. (I froze the once that hadn’t shot.) So now I have to wait until they are ready before I top up my first bed.
My arm got so sore pulling up weeds, we decided to start making the structure for the second bed. It should be ready for spring planting. This time, there will not be 16 tomato plants and 10 cucumber plants – I have learned my lesson!! I am thinking two of each!!!
If only my plants and roses would grow as well as the weeds do. I’m glad you had help. Judging by the size of that pile, you surely needed it. I hope your arm recovers quickly, Glenda.
Hi John. The problem is, I feed the roses and the weeds think it is for them!! The arm is still sore, I think I over did it!
Weeds are a window to your soil health and fertility – some weeks only grow in good soil, others only grow in poor. I’ve learned to live with weeds, in fact I have several semi-domesticated, and I intentionally grow them for salad or cooking (I have an entire row devoted to dandelion!). And I’m good about pulling them when they are small, especially in certain crops which can;t take weed competition (onions, leeks) – other stuff like tomatoes don’t seem bothered by weeds, so I’m less aggressive with those. And then at the end of our growing season, I simply cover some of my rows with black plastic, because if I didn’t not only would winter weeds grow, but the rains would make those rows too wet in the spring for early planting.
But it is true, the more weeds you pull, the less they will come back! Keep telling yourself that as you yank their little souls right out of the ground!
Enjoy.
Oh Doc, I never seem to get on top of them. I think it is my fate to pull weeds!!
oh God! My knees and wrists hurt for you
What about your shoulders??
What is it with weeds – they grow so damn quickly and well that I battle to keep up with them even when I am haven’t been on vacation. Kudos on riding of so much.
🙂 Mandy xo
Weeds grow better than anything else in my garden:( It is a continual battle to keep them under control.
Oh my, that must have taken quite some time – but the memories of the holiday more than make up for it 🙂
Tandy, I am sure you are right but my left arm doesn’t agree at the moment.
Two of each? I’m waiting to see what happens when you have an entire punnet and you’re looking at all the surplus seedlings and thinking, “oh what a waste..” 😀 Good job on the weeding, that was a HUGE effort!
I am not going to buy punnets this year. I know my self toooo much:(