Weeding. Definition: misery, drudgery, and dirty fingernails. (Although they stay clean if you wear rubber coated gardening gloves!)
Not Weeding.
Phrase denotes: 20 times the amount of weeds next year.
Phrase connotes: Get your butt in gear now to spare MUCH more misery next year.
We've had a warm spring. Weeds are now going to seed (the seed pods are opening and releasing seeds). The sooner you weed, the less you'll have to do next year.Remember: Get the roots. If you do not, your efforts are in vain. Tip: You can spear your shovel down to loosen the dirt and then reach for the root ball. Tip: If you have many weeds in a concentrated area, scrape the top layer of the dirt off, sift the weeds out, and leave as much dirt as possible on the ground.
If you are too lazy to weed, consider using a product like Round-Up. I STRONGLY encourage you to weed. More chemicals = unhealthy water supply = unhealthy you. Also, you must use Round-Up before the weeds start to seed. Round-Up takes time *up to two weeks) to kill the weed, and the expensive product is a waste if the plant is already spreading its joy. Heh.
What have we learned today, boys and girls? A four letter word that is not so nasty after all. Weed.
feel free to comment with your gardening questions!
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Green Thumb ArchivesGardening Tip #1: Out with the Old
Gardening Tip #2: Quality (Pruners Clippers)
Gardening Tip #3: Unfortunately time to weed
Gardening Tip #4: Hot pink rubber gloves
Gardening Tip #5: The perfect flower bouquet
Gardening Tip #6: Get rid of Aphids naturally
it's still snowing here. my garden is mulched with leaves from last fall. now weeds as of yet. just watching for the garlic and daffodil bulbs i planted last year to sprout. got my box of seeds in the mail yesterday. time to start some seedlings indoors and start mapping out my garden on paper!! (we are also joining a CSA this year. CSA = even more local, organic, yummy fruits and veggies and a wonderfully sustained local farm family!)
ReplyDeleteWow. I don't even aspire to be you because the idea overwhelms me.
ReplyDeleteHere in Salem all the daffodils are gorgeous and in full bloom.c
However, I do have seedling trays to plant in my garage. I should plant in April. They'll grow warmly until May when we're safely past the time it may freeze again.
Love-
DIgging out the roots can get back-breaking at times -- so here's an alternative for high-tech, low-impact weeding:
ReplyDeleteGet a two-gallon pressure sprayer, the kind you pump to create a vacuum (mine's a yellow Stanley). Get gallon jugs of distilled white vinegar (you can buy it when it's on sale for about two dollars), and keep spare jugs of it on hand for future weedings. On a warm dry day, fill the sprayer with two gallons, pump that puppy up, and spray the weeds point-blank. This method also works on pesky grasses that come up through gravel and other places where you don't want it.
White vinegar doesn't kill BIG weeds, but it gets the sprouting ones and the new grass. Plus the acetic acid naturally denatures and doesn't harm the soil or the environment. And it works FAST.
OK, thank you ONE MILLION for your post, and I'm sorry to not have replied sooner. I'm going to test out the vinegar. I would feel much better using it than any other product. I'll keep you posted.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to start a posting titled "confessions of a rogue gardener" or something of the like... because i killed a bunch of my lawn and misplaced my red clippers. People need to laugh at me. If I used your suggestion, I may have avoided some real large dead patches...
:)rose