My Future Weed Infestation Prevention Plan

After thinking about why I was posting so infrequently here I realized it's because of pictures and picture storage space. So, I'm not going to worry about having pictures in every post but I may come back and edit the pictureless posts to add pictures at a later date and I'll try to link to relevant pictures in my main blog so you can click over and see what I'm talking about if you want.

Today the mosquitoes were biting like crazy so my big lesson learned was to never garden, even for a few minutes without some kind of insect repellent (I make my own with lotion and essential oils but it won't work if I don't apply it). Although I was only working in the garden for about 20 minutes I did deadhead some of the following plants: marigolds, dahlias, verbena, little joe pye weed, roses, dianthus, petunias, tithonia, obedient plants, black eyed susans, coleus, calendula (although they're looking almost dead so I'm not sure it will make a difference), mexican blanket flower and mint.

Still waiting are more roses and almost everything named above, the reblooming lilacs, echinacea, mountain mint, lemon balm, bee balm, impatiens, lantana... there's more but you get the idea! And that's just the dead heading... the weeds are more abundant than the flowers it seems. But I'm focusing on dead heading this week so I can enjoy more flowers during the growing season.

The reason we have such a major problem with weeds is that the critical step of mulching the flower and herb garden beds never happened last autumn or this spring. I got rid of all the weeds at least twice but without mulch it was kind of futile. This time instead of weeding bed after bed, I'm going to weed for about 3/4 of the time and save the last 1/4 of my gardening session for spreading the mulch. Unfortunately I have an injury and can't lift a full bag of mulch but I'm going to ask my husband to fill the wheel barrow with mulch and I'll use a little bucket to grab light portions of mulch to make it more manageable. In a nutshell, my plan is to do smaller sessions of weeding but mulch right afterward. This should help prevent future major weed infestations like we have now. I'm calling this my "future weed infestation plan".

Late August Garden Update

So much has happened since I last posted (dinner plate dahlias and more new plants than I could number) that I'll just start with today :) Today was an exceptional gardening day, even though I didn't last out in the heat very long.

Today I had some fun gardening firsts for which I'm thankful. I planted my first recycled celery plant in the ground (I'd started it in a bowl a few weeks ago and it grew 3-4" of leaves already!), I planted my very first rooted cuttings of Cuban oregano and some lovely red coreopsis I also rooted from cuttings. And, I made a new friend via freecycle who let me enjoy her private garden and gave me a giant hosta plant and 3' tall lady fern (hoping both will survive the heat wave transplantation although the lady fern is looking pretty stressed). Also I had the lovely sighting of two preying mantises (one in my garden and one in my new friend's garden), a bunch of butterflies, moths and birds. Lovely! 

So, even though my garden is overrun with weeds, there are still lots of beautiful flowers to enjoy and I'll do what I can, when I can and pray for the best. Happy gardening!