Garden Update – January
— photos by Greg Allen —
We started putting down the cardboard. The area isn’t completely cleared, but we will keep working on it.
This leads me to our first lesson learned. Don’t underestimate the difficulty of clearing overgrown land. It can be a b*tch. This large area was a dog run, then a vegetable garden, then left to go wild for fifteen years. The stuff that grew back was nasty. There were huge pricker bushes with half-inch thorns. Did your mom ever read you the Brer Rabbit story where he pleads to the fox “Please don’t throw me into the briar patch!” Well Brer Rabbit would have been right at home in this plot of land.
Which brings me to the second lesson learned. There is a good argument for leaving the overgrown land the way it was. Granted. That was not going to happen. This large area took up most of the backyard and really was an eyesore. Most important, Greg’s wife wanted it gone. And the stuff in the yard may have been native, or it may have been invasive. I’m not sophisticated enough in the world of plants to know. Anyway, I am limiting any future new gardens to be replacement for sections of nicely manicured lawn.
You remember that current recommendations for starting new gardens is to leave the rototiller in the garage. Digging up the soil will expose the millions of weed seeds in the ground and cause an explosion of weed growth in the spring. Instead, cover the ground in cardboard and leave it. The current growth will be smothered and the weed seeds in the dirt will not get any sunlight and won’t germinate. In the spring, we’ll punch into the decomposing cardboard where we put the new plants, then mulch on top of the cardboard.
Here’s another lesson learned. Only use big sheets of cardboard. The smaller sheets have too many openings and are too easily blown away, requiring the homeowner to track them down in his neighbor’s yard. Sorry about that, Greg.
You can’t just put the cardboard down and leave it. It will blow away in a big windstorm. You need to put something heavy on top of each piece (another reason to use big sheets of cardboard). I had leftover materials from when I got a new roof, so we used those. Rocks, firewood, bricks, cement blocks, branches, lumber – any of this will work. Once it gets wet and frozen, the cardboard will stay down, but until then, it needs a little help.
I realize that it looks like I was doing all the work. Actually, I was moral support while Greg did all the heavy stuff. But since Greg was also taking the pictures, someone else (me) had to be in them. We put down another batch of cardboard in January and probably will go for a third batch of the stuff in March. I am taking off for the month of February. You’ll read about that in next month’s articles. Think Snowy Owls and Spoonbills!!!!