Keeping it going

Day 2 in the garden was more weeding. I think I overdid it yesterday pulling out some of those deep rooted weeds as my wrist is a bit sore today. The plan for today it to trim back all of the woody long weeds and remove whatever is loose. Nice and easy for my over worked wrist.

Making progress

There are 5 flower beds in total. One spans the entire width of the garden and the other 4 are shorter. Over the 2 days I managed to get 1 and a half of the shorter beds completely cleared of weeds and roots. The longest flower bed and 1 of the other shorter flower beds are now ready to have the roots pulled up. Ultimately this will have to wait a day or two until my wrist heals up.

Most of the weeds are like dead wooden vines that seem to creep around everywhere. A lot of them were easy to pull out without any force. I have no idea what these are but if you have any ideas feel free to leave a comment down below.

There were also a lot of bramble vines. They seemed to come from everywhere. One vine could be growing into the earth at multiple points. They were growing up and around the apply trees and in between the tiles. Removing all of these felt like the garden was starting to breathe again for the first time in ages.

A little friend

While I was working a robin was eagerly watching me. I think he was waiting for me to dig up a few worms for him to snack on. I was really enjoying his company as he perched on the opposite side of the flower bed chirping at me. This reminded me to refill out bird feeder and clean the bird bath. As I was cleaning the bird bath I noticed it had a little leak. I filled the leak with some bathroom sealant stuff I found in the shed. I’m not sure if it will adhere to the stone, but ill find out tomorrow when its dry and I try to fill it.

The aftermath

The compost bin is full so I picked an area and decided that would be my weed pile. Seeing the pile grow and grow as I removed more and more weeds was quite astonishing. I knew there was a lot but seeing them all mounted together in one place was something else. Its hard to believe that much waste was clogging up the flower beds and strangling the garden.

Making plans

For the final flower bed, I am going to need my best friends advice. Like I have mentioned I do not know a lot about plants. I don’t really know what is a weed and what is a plant. The last bed has a few different bushy grass things growing in it but I have no idea if they are supposed to be there or not.

I want to grow vegetables in one of the beds. The first bed that I cleared is going to be the vegetable patch. We made a list of what we want to grow and luckily there was a pretty good selection of seeds already in the shed. We will still need to get a few others. One day this week we will bag up the weed pile and drive it to our local recycling centre and maybe pop into a garden centre at the same time.

Weed watch

The worst part of this project is going to be dealing with the weeds growing between the tiles. 2 years ago I spent hours removing them all the week before I had a BBQ planned. Come the day of the BBQ most of them had started to grow back. A lot of them are dandelions which my mam tells me are very difficult to get rid of. We tried a mild herbicide 2 years ago and it did nothing. Not a single weed died. I mixed it to the right dilution and followed all the instructions correctly and nothing. We are reluctant to use and strong chemicals in case it affects the other plants.

I have read online that you can use boiling water, salt or vinegar. Some people even use a solution of all 3. So in the interest of science I decided to conduct a little experiment. I chose 3 victims and exposed each to different natural weed killer. Ill keep an eye on them to see if any of them shows any signs of working.

My mam also told me about a natural weed killer you can make from rhubarb leaves. Rhubarb leaves are poisonous and apparently you can steep them in water for a long time and make a weed killer. I will need to look into this more and I’m not sure how I feel about having a lot of toxic rhubarb leave tea lying around in the shed. We have a lot of cats and birds that visit the garden and I would hate for them to get into it accidently.

Germination station

We have a high cupboard above the fridge which is barely used and has a free side. This free unused cupboard now has the honour of becoming my germination station. I got a few small bowls and put a wet paper towel into each one for my little seed babies to grow in. I then covered each bowl with cling film. Thankfully we had a few seeds already which were in season. Incubating away in there are 2 types of spinach, mustard greens, runner beans and chili seeds.

Another day closer

Overall I am really happy with how the garden is coming along. I knew it was going to be a big task but so far I am enjoying it. There is still a lot more to be done. Some of those weeds are very deep rooted and my wrist will need to heal up before I can go back to removing them. It should be nice when it’s all done. I am looking forward to having friends over in the summer.