I stood in my vegetable garden eating a fresh 'Diva' cucumber just picked from the vine and daydreaming about a weed free garden. Is there such a thing? Especially at the end of July? Well, at least the cucumber was delicious! :)
Daydreaming with a 'Diva' cucumber
Of course, but a weed free garden would either be very sterile, or represent an obsessive gardener. Either way it would not be much fun.
Oh thank God, I can now say my garden is fun. : )
I like that thought process.
The only time the weeds bother me is when city people come to visit. It stresses them out to see a weed. LOL! I prefer a simple life with no stress and as Farmerdill says 'a fun garden'.
We have finally gotten almost all of our garden mulched and it's great to see so few weeds. The limas got too big too fast and are now harboring a crop of grasses along with the bean pods, but otherwise the garden looks quite spiffy. We used salt hay, grass clippings, and leaves, if that helps. Normally by this time in the season the weeds have taken over and I'm depressed at the sight, so I'm enjoying this!
I've got Diva cucumbers growing, too. I really like them!
Divas' are delicious!
Greenhouse,
Mulch has become my best friend! LOL! I just started using grass clippings this year and It really makes a difference in the weeding and keeping the soil moist. I've heard that grass clippings leads to grass growing in your garden and becoming a weed but I haven't noticed it yet.
My DH was afraid to use our grass clippings because of weeds, but a friend who gardens and uses them extensively told him she never had a problem, so we're using them now. So far so good! If we don't need them for the garden we put them in the compost along with the chicken manure and wood shavings from the coop, and any other material we have handy.
I've been using wood shavings for the chicken coupe too. The wood shavings are so much easier to handle than straw. My chickens actually eat grass clippings so I'm wondering if I could hay them up and feed it to them this winter. Just a thought. ;)
There are gardens where the produce barely (and not always) out paces the weeds. Part of the weed battle involves the age and size of the garden. Part involves selective weeding. I concentrate on removing the ones that are hardest to pull when they are big and leave the little ones alone. Learning to identify the toughest weeds and getting an early start in their removal is key. Having some garden weeds will distract insects that might otherwise be eating your plants. Keep the smaller, shallow rooted ones that won't compete with your veggies. This photo is two weeks old.
Not a great photo but here's a week later.
Ann, maybe you could save your clippings as long as they didn't compost and rot, which is a possibility with something that green and juicy. You'd probably have to lay them out and dry them first.
Laurel, your garden looks great! I don't see any weeds! Here's part of my garden, showing the mulch - strawberries, then peppers, and then tomatoes on their tripods, with a hint of bean fencing in the foreground, across the brick path. In the back of the garden, to the right, is the fig wall, and beyond that is a pasture and an old horse/sheep outbuilding, no longer in use:
This message was edited Jul 26, 2011 8:05 PM
GH, not seeing any weeds in your garden either. Note that I took my photos with a macro lens not too close to the ground. :>)
It all looks grand.....you guys are killing me with all the green.
Signed:
McDesert
The only weeds are in my lima bean patch, and I left that out of the picture! Here's another one, with the tomato poles directly in front, arbor to the left, onions just past the arbor, and chard and melons to the right:
I used to use grass clippings for mulch. I stopped last year. We have warm season grasses in our lawn like bermuda and carpet grass which will grow from "sprigging." It has taken me almost a year to eradicate the grass!
I've found with other weeds if I pull them before they can set seed or send out runners, I have better luck in keeping the garden presentable. My stirrup hoe is my best tool for weeding.
"We have warm season grasses in our lawn like bermuda and carpet grass which will grow from "sprigging." It has taken me almost a year to eradicate the grass! "
Wow! You actually got rid of bermuda grass? There's a big piece of success right there, Susie! Congrats!
Shoe
It wasn't easy! I still have a few pop up, but not huge mats of it like I had before. We now compost all our grass clippings before using.
I was thinking the same thing about the bermuda. Here they say if your neighbor has a bermuda lawn so do you, regardless of what kind of grass you've got planted.
I hate bermuda, second only to cat claw. I agree with Shoe and Laurel, good for you that you got rid of it. Persistance!!
You all have such beautiful gardens! I am loving looking at these photos! I don't have lots of weeds because of my obsessive mulching - but then there are the beds that go sort of "fallow" for awhile and don't get attended and then bam! somehow all these weeds moved in that I never saw... I am good at not seeing them as "weeds" but as "compost". LOL!
I've discovered that the mulch you buy in the bags bring in some weeds that I've never had before...such as creeping charlie!! I won't purchase bagged mulch anymore. Anyone else have that problem.