Hello Everyone, new member from the East Coast.

Hello,

I just joined and want to say hello and give a little info about my garden and me. I have been playing in the soil for a number of years but still have lots to learn. I grow mostly herbs, antique cottage type flowers, perennials and some annuals along with lots of flowering shrubs, bulbs and roses. My passion is for the old roses; most of the ones in my garden are the once blooming roses. I love the full cabbage type of rose over the florist rose and the main thing is the rose should be fragrant. I do have one red climbing rose in my garden that has no scent at all. In fact I have no idea which rose this is. It was here when I purchased my house and I keep planning to get rid of it and replace it with a smelly rose, but every year when I start to dig it up, it blooms up a storm. And so it is still in place. I did plant two Damask roses in the bed one on either side so at least there is some fragrance in that area. I try to garden as organically as possible. I don’t want to hurt any of the wildlife that I see in the garden. I get visits from bunnies, toads and lots of birds and the neighborhood kitties. And since I plan to grow more veggies with the herbs I don’t want any nasty stuff used on the food plants. I would like to get rid of most of the grass left in my garden and keep working toward that goal. I love the style of garden that Tasha Tudor called a “a good messy garden”. Only trouble is sometimes my garden is more of the messy and not the good! But I keep working on fixing that! I look forward to learning lots more here and enjoying reading about everyone’s gardening experiences.

Thanks,
Kat

welcome kat from upstate new york. you will find this a terrific place to get any kind of help and information you need. i grow vegetables in 5 gallon containers but i do have some advice that others have said works as far as getting rid of grass. get youself some very thin cardboard or some newspaper (sxcept the color section) and lay it down on top of the grass. use somthing to keep the cardboard or newspaper down and cover it with some good soil. in the spring time you will have beautiful soil with no grass.

Welcome Kat!!!
Have fun checking out the different forums. Please drop in to the Mid-Atlantic and also the NE forums if you haven't already. Happy gardening!
Jan

Herbie43,
Thanks for the warm welcome, it feels good since we are deep in snow at the moment. I was so hoping we were finished with winter. I am going to try using the newspaper idea on the worse area of my garden. I have a bad back and the ground in that part of the garden is always so hard to dig, that I have not been able to plant anything there yet. I will let you know how it turns out.

Jan23,
Thank you for the nice welcome. I will be heading to visit the Mid-Atlantic forum as soon as I finish typing this note. After the snow dumping we just received, spring seems a long way off. At least I still have a few seeds I need to start. Better get them done today.
Kat