Wednesday, May 30, 2007

How does your garden grow?

With peas
And broccoli
And carpeting all in a row.


And two million weed seedlings. Could they be called weedlings?
I guess that is what happens when you plant with black gold. AKA- manure. Cows eat grass and hay, which just happen to be full of seeds. It is interesting that seeds can pass through the digestive system of an animal intact. Ready to sprout where ever they fall. That is a pretty good way to get around if you ask me. And did you know that birds are unaffected by capsicum? That is the stuff in hot peppers that makes them hot. Birds can just nibble away on things that could make a grown man weep. What other sorts of useless information can I astonish you with today? How about Creeping Charlie is a bugger to get rid of. The stuff will grow in, on, and under just about anything. Every little chopped piece of it has the potential to sprout roots and grow and spread. It is already in bloom and yet more Creeping Charlie seeds shall soon find their way into my garden. When I hauled up the carpets this spring there were some pretty big colonies of CC that were working their way around under there. Admittedly it didn't look very healthy. The leaves were small and kind of pale, but the fact that it was actually growing under there at all lets us know that it means business. And the stuff loves to dig it's thousands of tiny roots into the weave of the carpets and break off when you try to pull the suckers off. Oh what fun.
Yesterday I went out to the garden and put down all of the rest of the carpet. And pulled many many CC plants off of it. I was going to plant the tomatoes and peppers, but we have a night coming up that is suppose to be just above freezing and if I don't have to subject my little darlings to that, I won't. I don't think that either of us would like it very much.

4 comments:

David T. Macknet said...

Do your birds just mock that flashy tape stuff, too? The birds where we garden are undeterred by just about everything, except for the annoyingly persistent Jack Russel Terrier who lives there. And even then, the quail manage to sneak about, pecking holes in everything they can get to.

What's on the schedule for your garden, by the way? Have you a long-term plan for this season, in terms of what gets planted when and where?

Anonymous said...

Creeping charlie is a pain in the butt. I have a standing date with charlie every Saturday morning.

Christine said...

We have some sort of creeping crud down here in Virginia that is crawling up my tomato cages. I spent some time last night yanking them out. Initially I thought they were stray pole beans but nope.

I do like the carpets covering up your weeds. I'm about to call the mulch dudes, because I've got weeds apoppin' and since the boyfriend broke my favorite hoe using it as a PRY BAR, I haven't found a decent replacement to get out there and whack some sense into the stray leafy bits.

Rhonda the Stitchingnut said...

I'm still trying to figure out which ones are weeds and which are seedlings. It's always a guessing game for me. So may the best seedling win and I get something to harvest that's edible right?