{ Posts Tagged ‘dandelions’ }

The war on weeds: how to bake or solarize weed patches

I’ve been pretty up front with the world as to my losing battle against the dandelions, thistles, and various invasive grasses. But I’m tired of the shame. I am ready to fight back in a big way this year.

Before

 

I picked a weedy spot against the house that is supposed to be a gravel walkway to try an experiment with solarizing–a method of weed killing that basically uses the power of the sun to fry the suckers. Aptly known also as ‘baking’, you cover the area with plastic, weighting it down so the plants beneath are both deprived of oxygen and exposed to extreme heat. You have likely seen this principle in action when the lid for the kids’ sandbox accidentally got left out in the middle of the lawn for two weeks and everything under it turned yellow. Same principle, except we’re doing it on purpose.

I decided to try both clear and black plastic to see if one might me more effective than the other. So far, the clear seems to be working better, but I only put this together last Friday, so the jury is still out. Stay tuned.

Clear plastic, after five days. I probably should have whipper-snipped everything first, to avoid the seeds.

I just used garbage bags, without cutting them open or anything, so a double layer of plastic, and then weighted them with rocks. Making it airtight would result in a stronger effect, I would think.

What a difference a long weekend can make

Despite the rather chilly temperatures this past long weekend, I still managed to get out in the garden and cross a few tasks off my list. It's not very often I have two straight days in a row to get things done. So with a new pink pair of gardening gloves that I got for my birthday, I set out with my basket of tools to weed, plant, prune and dig.

This is what left me with a sense of accomplishment:

  1. We planted two five to six-foot cedars: I bought these about a month ago and have been waiting for a chance to dig them in. Fingers crossed that they make it. They still look lovely and green.
  2. I dug out a ton of dandelions and other annoying weeds that magically appeared after all that rain we got these last couple of weeks. Talk about eco-friendly pest control, it was also a workout!
  3. Give my boyfriend a pair of loppers or pruning shears and I come back to a twig with a root, so I kindly pointed out what I wanted pruned and how. Lorraine Flanigan`s article on how to prune spring-flowering shrubs, was helpful for my forsythias.
  4. I spread around some compost in a couple of my beds to prepare them for the lovely plants I have in store for them.
  5. I'm not sure if it was the fungus gnats or the fact that they'd outgrown the little peat pellets, but all of a sudden, my seedlings were looking sad and limp–and they didn't need water. So I transplanted my seedlings into bigger pots until I'll be able to plant them right into the garden.
  6. I have always felt bad about tossing away those wooden mandarin orange containers, so this winter I kept them because I knew they'd come in handy for something. And in one of them I planted salad greens. Yesterday the squirrels made a couple of holes in it, but if things start to grow, I’ll take a picture.
  7. I had some herb plants I was trying to protect from frost, but I just couldn't wait any longer, so I planted them.
  8. I dug out a ton of lily of the valley and their network of roots–they are so pretty and smell so nice, but they're a pain in the butt every spring when they're in the middle of my garden and I'm wanting to plant things. So I had to be ruthless.

And that sums up my list. A few tasks down, a few hundred to go!