garden work: weeds, weeds, weeds

Today I spent a couple hours working in my community garden plot. Where do all these weeds come from? I think I pull them and then I turn around and they have grown up again.

Weeding takes most of my garden time now, but I do other fun stuff too.

 (Someday I'll do a post on all the different ways to weed, and maybe even one on all the different types of weeds I grow in my gardens.)

Today's garden work (besides weeding):
- Remove salt marsh hay mulch from my garlic bed (I harvested the garlic last week) and put it on my recently planted seedlings (cabbage, Brussels spouts, and broccoli)
- Remove lower leaves from tomato plants and weed well around them to maximize air flow - in our damp and humid summer, the plants have a very large amount of early blight and leaf spot
- Harvest summer squash, cucumbers, dill, and cut flowers (tall blue ageratum and nigella)
- Plant a few winter radish seeds, watermelon and black radish - it may be too warm for these now but I'll find out
- Train butternut squash and cucumber vines up their trellises
- Begin to cut off and compost potato plants that are all mostly done (brown and dry) now
- Water
- Spray brassica plants (broccoli, cabbage, kale, and Brussels sprouts) with spinosad (for cabbage worms).

weeds, volunteers or invasives?

Some plants reseed regularly in my garden: bachelor buttons, anise hyssop, Johnny jump ups, borage, dill, ruby streaks mustard, even tomatoes and squashes. This year a few pea plants sprouted in my compost pile and last year's potatoes sprouted in the garlic bed.

I suppose much of gardening is choosing what should grow where.

I carefully moved the dill volunteers to their own patch, and the ruby mustard and Johnny jump ups to theirs. Most of the borage I let stay where it grows. The hyssop is aggressive and I pull most of it and let a few plants (in places I want them) grow. All volunteer tomatoes and last year's potatoes get pulled. Occasionally I let a squash volunteer grow. This year, I have one volunteer squash still growing in the onion bed. Last year's volunteer squashes turned into prolific medium-sized pumpkins. Likely this year's is too, but its a fun mystery for now.

I have some aggressive volunteers this year. A couple years ago I planted seeds for a purple morning glory. It is a lovely plant and flower. Someone warned me that its invasive. I remember I replied - "well, I'll just pull up the plants I don't want". And that's what I am doing now - LOTS of them. I have morning glory sprouts every where within 20 feet of last years vines. I keep thinking that if I can pull them all this year and prevent ANY flowers, then I can eliminate them from my garden - and my neighboring community plots - and the adjacent meadows. We do not need another invasive. Gardening near a natural area requires attention to what we plant to prevent invasion by aggressive plants.

Other sprouts in the invasive category in our community garden plots are oregano, mint, raspberries, and sunchokes. My garden plot has problems with the latter two. Today I pulled many many raspberries and sunchokes from my plot. They sneak in from neighboring plots. I've designated a small area for a few raspberry vines, which do really well here and are delicious.

In my home garden, the prolific volunteers/weeds are violets, ruby mustard, tomatoes, dill, and oregano's. I have 3 types of oregano that I love to cook with. It seems daily I pull up stray oregano from my rose bed or garden paths. In my suburban home garden, I like to encourage somewhat aggressive plants to fill spaces I don't have time to plant. I don't mind pulling them when I want to plant something else. In a suburban location, the aggressive  plants don't spread out of my yard.

The invasive volunteer in my parents garden is also oregano. This year my dad did a lot of work to reduce the oregano patch which had gotten out of hand. Like me, my mom likes to have a good amount available to add to the salad and cooking, so my dad couldn't remove it all.

its weeding season

Today I weeded an hour in my community garden plot. Funny how you can weed and think you've got them all, and then look again and there are a bunch of big weeds. If I look for the little ones, I miss the big ones. Today I thought I weeded the whole garden and told Skip we could go walk and then I noticed the asparagus bed - full of weeds. Skippy is used to me changing my mind and taking a while after I say I'm done. But still, I didn't want to make him wait too long so I only weeded half the asparagus bed. Its waiting for me for another day.

"slow gardening"

I didn't know slow gardening was a new movement.

My problem is I leave to go to my garden and say "back in half an hour". Two hours later I come home. And no one's surprised I took longer than I said. I always do.

Its hard to know all the garden chores that need to be done until you are in the garden. Weeds can grow surprisingly fast. Tomatoes all of a sudden need staking or basil flowers need picking. Harvesting and washing a nice big crop takes time. And as the cold comes, arranging the mulch to protect the last greens takes time.

But my real problem is I don't plan for being awed by the beauty of the next day in the garden. I forget that each day the sunflowers get bigger and the potato foliage more lush. I forget how good the sun (or the rain) feels on my back. I forget how sweet the birds sing in the morning. Skippy sprawls out on the warm soil and I look for a few more weeds to tend to. Sometimes it just takes more time than I planned to soak it all in.

So, yes, that's me. I'm a slow gardener. I'm glad to hear I'm part of a new movement.