I’ve stopped for a hydration break and to get out of the sun and heat. As I write this, we’ve reached our predicted high of 19C/66F. The winds are still pretty high, which does help, but it was time to go in! I’m not sure if I’ll be heading back out again today, or not. It depends on how my pain levels are. I did remember to take painkillers before I started, at least!
I got a couple of “before” pictures before I started. The marker for what will be the path between the bed that got done yesterday is almost exactly at the middle of the next bed to work on. Which means half the bed will need to be shifted on top of the other half.
The first thing that needed to be done was to loosen the soil in the entire bed with the garden fork. Years of amending these beds has really made a difference! When we started growing here, we could barely get a spade or garden fork into the soil more than a couple of inches. Now, I can push the tines on the garden fork all the way into the ground! The rains have certainly helped to soften the soil, too. It is already just moist, though, and not at all soggy.
The drainage here is a bit too good!
Next was to start weeding along the side that will be the middle of the bed, once everything is shifted over. This bed had a lot more dandelion tap roots to get rid of, compared to the crab grass rhizomes. The rhizomes are more of an issue along the edges.
As expected, once I started getting closer to the trees, I was catching more and more elm roots. Plus more larger rocks. One of the marking posts kept falling down because it couldn’t go deep enough into the soil. I ended up getting a trowel and digging out the rock it was hitting, right at the 4′ measurement that needed to be marked.
Then I started hitting larger roots.
I extended the weeding up to the 18′ mark, beyond the existing bed, which is about 17′ long, counting the width of the logs that had framed it. In the last picture of the above Instagram slide show, you can see one of the tree roots partially pulled up and draped over the handle of the garden fork. There’s another, larger root that runs across and into what is currently the path. I’ll have to bring the loppers over cut that, and any other roots I find along the way.
I just had to get a picture of the tree branches against the sky. The maple trees are leafing out nicely, with all the rain we’ve been having, but the Chinese elms… They’re not getting their leaves yet. They get their seeds, first. All that green on those branches is seeds, seeds and more seeds.
Seeds that will mature, dry up, turn brown, and fall.
A whole storm of them, blowing and drifting and getting into everything.
So. Many. Seeds.
I’ve started to really, really dislike these trees! Not only do their roots invade up into our garden beds and grow bags, but they suffocate everything around them with their seeds – and once those little buggers start germinating, they have ridiculously long and strong tap roots that makes weeding them far more difficult than one would think, when pulling on a tiny little seedling to weed them out!
I wonder if I have enough plastic to cover these beds and solarize them before their log walls get added? I definitely have enough for at least a couple of beds. It might be worth sacrificing more of our clear garbage bags, if it’ll keep those god-awful seeds off the bare soil!
While working, I was thinking about what to do with the paths, since they are basically all crab grass, not lawn grass. It might be worth investing in some landscape cloth, weed whacking them as close to the ground as possible, covering them with the landscape cloth, then covering them with wood chips.
Something to think about, after these beds are done!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 