Easter weekend is almost here, and I, like many of you, plan on spending all four days in the garden, with a blow torch. It's a really good way to avoid eating ham.
I’ll be lining the garden paths with landscape cloth to get ahead of the weeds. The blow torch? That’s for cutting the cloth. It seals the edges and adds a little flair to what’s essentially crawling around in dirt with a flamethrower.
Practical and not at all alarming to the neighbouring gardeners because - they're gardeners. Also, they are familiar with me.
We use whatever arsenal we have especially at a community garden. We are scroungers and scrabblers and if it takes fire or an off key accordion solo to get us where we need to be that's what we're going to do.
Between torch sessions, I’ll be checking on the oats and peas I planted as a cover crop. With any luck, they’re sprouting. If not, I’ll be staring at dirt.
Cover Crop
My community garden soil has become inert. It's dry and dusty even after rain. Partly because it has good drainage and also because there's no organic material left in it.
That means the soil has very little nutrients and won't hold moisture or plant roots very well. The beds are as dry as a rice cake cough.
I’m using oats and peas as a cover crop. You plant the seeds in spring before everything else, let them grow until planting time then cut them down and let them fall on the soil.
Together, oat+pea mixes they improve the soil without me having to buy and haul in yards of compost. The pea roots grab nitrogen from the air and stash it in the soil, while the oats stop weeds, add organic matter, and keep everything covered so the soil doesn’t erode or dry out.
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The last time I planted a cover crop, it was rye that I gathered from a local historic kitchen garden (they asked me to come in and harvest as much as I wanted. I let it grow too long, it reseeded all over my garden and I said I'd never do it again.
To reiterate. We're gardeners. We do stupid things we said we'd never do again all the time. We also do really smart things sometimes so everything more or less evens out.
I’m outsourcing the job of soil rehab to plants. They have a better work ethic than I do.
The cover crop will also suppress seeds. Oats release natural chemicals through their roots that suppress weeds. A cover crop and a hitman, all in one.
I’ll also be tidying up the beds because no matter the weather, I’ll be out there. We’re gardeners, not roofers. 🙄
And so it all begins - with optimism and energy (on a very warm day in March in the photo above). I'm quite confident I can get the entire garden cleaned up and ready to go in this long weekend.
I had the same level of confidence when I declared (quietly to myself) I would do laundry last weekend. But I don't like doing laundry and I do like flame throwing so that's not a fair comparison.
🌱 These are the tasks I need to complete:
- Weed the paths, these are my weeding tips.
- Lay down landscape fabric and blow torch cut it to fit the pathways
- Fix/secure/rebuild structures
- Pull out the finished compost, turn the rest of it
- Re-secure the fence/check for holes
- Conduct a full security sweep for gophers, voles, and any unauthorized personnel
- Stare at the chaos of the scrap wood pile, decide it’s a problem for Future Me, and walk away with purpose
- Set up a tiny traffic detour for worms so they avoid the construction zone
- Attempt to communicate with the peas through interpretive dance—for morale
- Hold a formal eviction hearing for the dandelion tree that’s claimed squatters’ rights in Bed 4
- Offer a small sacrifice to the gardening gods in the form of one broken trowel and a glove with grub guts on it.
- Uncover ancient pottery shards, realize it’s just a broken mug. Display it anyway.
- Draft a treaty between the mint and everything else in the herb bed
More or less, that's what I'll be doing this weekend along with going to the annual family Easter dinner where I'm responsible for the scalloped potatoes and white trash salad this year.
And if all goes according to plan, by Tuesday I’ll have a tidied garden, a scorched path, diplomatic relations with the mint, and exactly zero clean laundry.
Robert Foster
I grow mint in pots to avoid them taking over the garden. Place a pot near the kitchen door for easy access when needed.
Karen
My mints have all died (I had a favourite Korean liquorice mint) and it died in a pot on me 3 times. I know it works for everyone else but for me mint in pots doesn't work. Maybe I'll give it another shot this year. ~ karen!
Sharon
Kodos to you and if you have any thoughts on repelling the gophers from the garden please share.
Patti_is_knittinginflashes
Mint. It took over the side yard at my last house. I learned to keep it contained at this house. So far, so good.
Fresh-from-the-garden mint is a necessity for our mint juleps and mojitos.
Norma
You'll enjoy the landscape fabric in the pathways! I did the same last year and it feels like such a delight to walk into the garden and not come back out with muddy feet. I too, despaired of endless pathway weeding while I tried to manage field work and two desk jobs in my schedule - the landscape fabric made all of that seem much easier. The only tip I have is to make sure to use more pins to stick it down than you normally would think you need - the wind catches any edge that it not stretched tight and pinned down securely and will work away at it until it lifts, pulling quite a few more out with it. I wish you great success!
Jody
I'm ever so slightly confused. Do you simply broadcast a mix of pea and oat seeds onto the beds? Will they germinate and grow enough before May 2 4 weekend when tenders can be planted around here?Do you just cut back everything before they grow too much?
Danni
oh my god mint!
If you know, you know.
jacques savard
is it possible to plan some lantala flower here in quebec inside
or it ia to late or difficul to have the plan
Karen
Hi Jacques. I'm not sure if you mean Lantana. In which case I've never grown it but looked it up and see it has a very long germination time. Months sometimes! So it is probably too late for you to plant that and expect flowers this year. If you meant something else, let me know. ~ karen!
Mary W
Right on time - you always come through no matter what subject! We have gravel walkways and patio which grow enormous amounts of teeny, tiny weeds that you need a tweezer to pull out since we put the gravel over weed barrier. They spread so fast here in Florida, they come up behind me, as I crawl down the path to pull out the miniature monsters. So I bought a blow torch for weeding. What used to take hours has been reduced to 10 minutes and better yet, my SIL loves to use it so he happily does that chore for me (pathway) and my daughter (patio). It gives me so much pleasure to watch. Next, I'm in process of renewing my greenstalks and ground garden - dumping used potting mix in compost area. Got the idea to fence it in and revitalize all that used soil. I've been trying to figure out the best way - enter stage left, Karen with answers! I have the electric fence put up (from your suggestion and link) and this year we added rabbit fencing around bottom of interior garden - electric fence surrounds it making a 'moat' in which I've decided to move my citrus and greenstalks into. Deer had a nasty habit of removing the growing tips of my Meyer Lemon! OK, now to plant all my seedlings today into the newly refreshed in-ground garden and to plant up the greenstalks. I'm thrilled to be working in it again but after the 2 year hiatus it has been daunting - so I'm especially happy to be working in a refreshed and deer/rabbit free space. So Happy! Thanks as always for your excellent suggestions and tips. They really help me!
Wendy
I too plan on spending time in my garden, after the daily game of “pick up sticks” after our ice storm 2 weeks ago. If I manned a chipper everyday for the rest of the spring/summer I still couldn't clean up the destruction. So sad, but the narcissus are popping up, so I’ll focus on them this weekend.
Happy long weekend!
Ann
Lucky for me, I raise rabbits and rabbit manure is a wonderful thing. Even outside, my rabbits have potty pans. I fill those pans with what is called soil conditioner at our local big box home store. It is really finely chopped up forest floor product. Meaning bits of bark, decomposed leaves, pine cones, ect. When I empty the potty pans I get about half the soil conditioner, half rabbit pellets. That goes in a pile to decompose a bit more before I use it.
Another great thing I have now, but won't for long, is that the local cable company finally laid fiber optic cable down our road. They dug up the roadside and then replanted with cool season fescue. That is currently close to putting up seed heads but I am able to go cut down huge armfuls now and am using it to mulch around newly planted warm season crops...
But yeah, us gardeners will try just about anything once. Some end up being losers, others are big winners for us....
Karen
There's no stopping us. No matter how ridiculous the idea. It's a condition. ~ karen!
Randy P
Me? Over the next 72 hours I'll be checking off a few more chores from your evil Spring Cleaning list then Easter brunch at my son's on Saturday. So... basically... just as much labour as you have decided to self-inflict on yer cute self. You ARE the Energizer Bunny of the garden universe.
Jenna Marie Hill
I'm intrigued by the gopher and vole security survey. I'm plagued by them in my yard. How do you get rid of them?
Karen
Hi Jenna! I think voles are almost impossible to eliminate in an open yard. The only thing you can do with a garden is make it as difficult as possible for them to get in. Eliot Coleman has a technique using boxes and mouse traps but ick. You'd have to empty and reset it multiple times a day. ~ karen!