Weeding the Flowerbed

I had a busy Saturday. but I got home with enough sunlight left to get outside and clear out the one of the flowerbeds in front of the house.  I've found that some flowers were already planted.  The crocuses have already bloomed. but now they're bent over:
  

I simply mixed up the soil and removed the weeds, as in this patch:

Here are a few "before" pictures:

And here are a few "after" pictures:

And finally, here's all of the trash and weeds that I managed to remove:

Weekend Yardwork

With mild weather hanging around central New York this weekend, I found a little time to get out to the garden and clear out the "planter boxes".  They were full of grass and weeds, with a couple of goldenrod plants sprinkled in.  The plan, as of now, for the spring is to plant something - probably flowers - in these long, rectangular boxes, and then worry about the rest of the garden later.  The garden, as you can see, looks as if it was simply abandoned one day...the stool and small weeding box left in place.  You can see in the following photos how I cleared out the garden this weekend.  And what is that in the above photo with the red handle...a new tool, perhaps?  But more on that tomorrow...

Things Grow

Things grow.  Even though we're getting well into fall and the trees are dropping their leaves, there's still enough warmth, sunlight, and moisture for the smaller plants to keep on growing.  I was very thorough in removing the plants from the fringe of the garden and digging to pull up their roots, but still, small green spouts have started to pop up everywhere, just two weeks after getting it cleared (see above).

Elsewhere in the yard, seedlings are fighting through the underbrush and leaf litter and hoping to join their parent trees someday as the elder statesmen of the yard.  Maple trees dominate much of the northeast boundary of my property, and this little seedling is one of several in a relatively small area that is trying to gain a foothold.

I discovered this little conifer while I was clearing out some thorny plants and surveying an edge of my property that I hadn't gotten to before.  He's lucky to have survived with all of the thorny plants around that could have choked him away.  His parent tree is not too far away - one of three evergreens in the yard.  (Sorry, my tree identification is not so good, so I can't tell you what type they are.)

And here is the devil.  Yes, that innocent looking sprig, small and harmless looking, has become the bane of my yard-managing existence.  This is the beginnings of a thorny plant.  In its early stages, it has no thorns, and it climbs straight upward.  Eventually, though, it stretches out, develops those prickly thorns, and overruns everything around it.  Yes, even now, as fall begins to foreshadow winter, the thorny plants are sprouting, growing, reaching out, taking over.  As I said, things grow, and the most aggressive plants, it seems are always growing.

Clearing the Weedy Garden: A Photo Series

While I didn't get as much raking done as I wanted to this weekend, I did finish clearing out just about all of the plants from the side of the garden that needed it the most.  Here's a look at my progress, from the beginning of the clearing project through this weekend.

To begin with, the garden and the fringe outside the garden were overgrown with weeds.

I started at the edge of the fringe, and uncovered an entranceway to the garden.

I finished the fringe first, and left a couple of healthy-looking shrubs in place.

Next it was time to tackle the inside of the garden.  This was tricky, because along the edges, the weeds had grown right through the wire fencing.

I cleared out the pesky thorny plants first.  I didn't want to get pricked by thorns trying to get to the other plants; plus, the throny plants were the ones holding the whole thing together.

I uncovered a well-preserved piece of newspaper in the soil.  Unfortunarely, it crumbled every time I touched it, and I couldn't find a date or a point of reference to help me identify how long the garden has been out of use.

It doesn't show up too well in this picture, but this is the one and only hole in the garden that I've found to be dug by the groundhog.  There must have been something good here.

And, finally a couple of looks at the unfinished product, as of now.   The bigger plants in and next to the garden have been cleared out.  Not quite ready for planting anything yet, but slowly getting there...

Grass or weeds?

One of the bigger challenges that I face as a first-time house-owner is that I have no idea what I’m doing, in the garden or in the yard.  I guess it’s probably a good thing that I can admit that.

My grandfather, on the other hand, has decades of experience in gardening and managing a yard, and his yard and garden have always looked immaculate, so when he offers advice, I listen.  I was talking with him on the phone last week, and I mentioned all of the weeds in my lawn.  He suggested that I spray the weeds with Weed-B-Gon.  I explained that I don’t want to use any pesticide on the lawn. He replied that a little Weed-B-Gon really wouldn’t have a noticeable impact on the groundwater, which is true.  But at the same time, there are an awful lot of weedy plants in the lawn, especially the lower part of the lawn near the wildflower patch, which is mostly short, stubby weeds and very little grass.   It would take quite a bit of Weed-B-Gon to zap all of those weeds.  If I want to clear out those weeds, I think the easiest approach would be to pull or dig them up myself.

But first, I have to ask myself if it’s even worth replacing the weeds with grass.  The lower part of the yard is quite shady, so grass may not grow well there.  It’s also a matter of convenience.  In my couple of months of mowing the lawn so far, I haven’t necessarily had to mow the lower third of the yard every time; the short, stubby weeds simply don’t grow as fast as grass.  It’s an area that’s not really conducive to lawn games (like my bocce ball set), and the weeds don’t get in the way any more than grass does.  So, long story short, I’m not going to worry about the short, stubby weeds in the lower third of my lawn for now.  After all, I have a garden to build.

Frost Advisory

I took a peek ahead to this weekend's weather today.  It looks likely that we'll see our first frost of the year - and a hard frost at that - on Friday night into Saturday.  Now, if I were a normal gardener, I'd be concerned with picking my vegetables and protecting my plants in advance.  But first of all, I'm not much of a gardener, and secondly, right now I don't have much of a garden, just a bunch of weeds, wildflowers, and grass.  So I won't have to worry about that frost damaging anything important.  And it's a good thing, too, because I'll be out of town this weekend and won't get to see the damage until I get back on Sunday.  With any luck, the frost will make clearing out the rest of the garden easier.

Last Weekend

 

I haven't described in much detail what I did in the yard last weekend.  It was the first chance I've had to leave my own footprint on the yard.  I want to clean up the garden, so I started with the brush on the outside fringe of the garden.  It had become overgrown, and I was curious to see what I'd uncover.

The first thing I uncovered was the old entrance to the garden.  There were stones on either side of the entranceway and some small logs to mark a path of entry.  It's something I plan to keep, though I'll probably enhance it a bit with more logs and maybe more decorations.

As I dug in the ground, I unearthed rocks, bugs, worms, a nut (possibly buried by a squirrel), and some string buried by a previous owner.  I dug up the roots of plants to make sure they don't grow back next year.  

I left a few things in place: a couple of shrubs and a couple of flowering plants.  I figure that leaving them there, at least for another few weeks, won't hurt anything and will make it look better than bare soil.

As I uncovered the ground, I began to think about what I'll do with this area in the spring when it's time to plant.  There quite a few rocks in the ground, so it doesn't seem to make sense to put grass in and try to mow around all of those rocks.  I plan to leave the two shrubs in place and add a few more shrubs and flowering plants to make it a welcoming entrance area to the garden.  It should be a nice complement to the garden.  Now that that's been cleared out, I'm itching to get to the garden itself.

Vision

You have to clear out the weeds 

To be able to see the bees.