What Did You Do In The Garden?

[ducks4you]

MY spearmint and chocolate mints are encased in cement and bricks borders and work their way around the house. IF you give them a lot of land and lots of water they will happily spread wherever. If they are confined and in a dry area, they take much longer. Mints are great fillers when contained bc they choke out a lot of weeds.
But, REALLY, how much time did you Give your mints for them to spread this much. Years?!?
I haven't seen ANY, and I mean ANY mint in my lawns. Plenty of plaintain, creeping charlie, clover, but NO MINT.
Bindweed does the same as mint, seeds and runners underground. YET, I have dug them out and eradicated them in many of my garden patches. Same with blackberries. BOTH of them are very invasive but it takes SEASONS for them to take over, at least where I live, which is said to have ideal soil bc the glaciers stopped 45 minutes drive south of us.
My favorite garden tool is my spade, bc it helps me fix my gardening problems.
Btw, I throw runners into the garbage. Dig up the weed below the runners,, separate the dirt from the runners, into the trash the runners go. Even little bits of them can regenerate into a problem.

 

[flowerbug]

the mints in the grasses are many feet apart from where they were originally planted. 30-50ft or more in places. remember we get flash floods here that can move seeds around (not as much now as before but we still do have heavy rains that will puddle and that lets seeds move around easily at times). there are patches of thyme coming up too in the grass. we never moved the plants or obviously planted any of these mints or thymes in the grassy areas, they just got there by seeds being transported around.

for quite a few years now we have the original mint places gone but the migrated mint patches in the grass are there and they've not been on our schedule to eliminate we just keep mowing over them (and i listen to Mom complain about the smell every time since she can't stand mint - no, i don't know why she planted (and so many kinds!) it to begin with... once in a while i use them for tea or cooking but rarely as i don't want to cause issues with her if she gets any of the oils from the plants on her.

i've found that there are very few weeds here that survive being repeatedly dug up, knock the dirt off the roots and then leave them exposed on the surface to dry out. as long as they don't have seeds to drop i don't throw anything in the trash or burn it. seed heads i might take and put in the bucket and that ends up on the back weed pile where the animals can pick through it if they want (mostly i see the birds in there). really stubborn weed roots can end up on top of the weed pile where they can completely dry out and eventually they get turned into worm food like the rest of it back there.

 

[ducks4you]

True. Always good to remove seeds from ANY plants that you do not want. We get heavy rains, too, still mint has NOT spread to my lawn. Your flooding must be serious.
I wouldn't advise composting ANY weed I don't want, especially those that multiply with runners. That could be part of your problem.

 

[flowerbug]

True. Always good to remove seeds from ANY plants that you do not want. We get heavy rains, too, still mint has NOT spread to my lawn. Your flooding must be serious.
I wouldn't advise composting ANY weed I don't want, especially those that multiply with runners. That could be part of your problem.

it really isn't my problem, it is Mom's problem and i've suggested what i would do because it would also reduce or eliminate some of the extra work i face in gardening here, but i can only suggest things. whatever happens i'm usually ok with it as long as it doesn't involve poisons or rusty nails/screws.

today i finished up the SE corner garden inside the fence and the neighboring smaller garden (for the moment, i'll have to get back to doing some other work in them starting Sunday or Monday). then i did some weeding/scraping in three other gardens.

tomorow i will be back working on the grass that is trying to invade the north garden and do some more scraping. most of it looks pretty good, just a few edges which are getting invaded. a constant issue when you have lawn edged gardens (see above )... the quickest way of dealing with the little clumps of grass is to just pull them and put them in a bucket and then bring those inside and put them in the worm farm buckets and the worms will take care of them through the winter and by spring there won't be anything left except the chewed up remains mixed in with everything else. i did this last year by starting a completely new bucket, but i don't think i'll have as much and i should have room in the buckets. the real tiny sprouts of grass coming from seeds can usually be taken out with a quick scrape and then since it isn't raining they'll dry out in the sun for a few days and be gone.

 

[ducks4you]

Mowed/poisoned burdock in the south pasture. Sprayer was low, container of weed/grass killer's sprayer didn't work, so I poured it into my good sprayer and poisoned chickweed and other weeds growing in the gravel S and E of the house. This morning I moved the pine bows I had cut in September. I plan to saw them down to size this afternoon and let DH burn them in the fire pit. A little bit of raking up tiny pine sticks and I will be able to poison MORE 1st year burdock after mowing with my bag power, so as to pick up any burrs.
Yesterday morning I gave my oats cover crop a Good soaking. Highs in the 70's with lots of sunshine through Tuesday, good growing, more importantly good roots filling in. Looks like grass!

 

[flowerbug]

...
Yesterday morning I gave my oats cover crop a Good soaking. Highs in the 70's with lots of sunshine through Tuesday, good growing, more importantly good roots filling in. Looks like grass!

it looks so nice and green!

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

I got leaves from a gardening job so I spread them over two of my raised bed planters. And over top of my barrels of garlic that are already pushing up thru the soil.

I have two bradford pear trees out front, but I hate their leaves and dang fruit.

 

[Zeedman]

More often than not, it is too wet in the Fall here to clean up the gardens, especially if the frost comes late... I haven't got the heart to turn under veggies that are still producing. This wonderful warm dry spell has been a welcome exception to that rule, so we took advantage of it. DW & I finished tearing down all of the trellises at home yesterday; today I put away all the posts & rods, and mowed & tilled both gardens. Tomorrow I will add & turn under all of the shredded leaves from the yard, some gypsum, and a garbage can of charcoal sifted out of the fire pit.

Just after lunch, we drove out to start cleaning the rural garden. We were able to clean off & tear down all but three trellises, which will be finished tomorrow. I usually let the fence poles dry on the ground for a day anyway, since that makes it easier to knock the clinging soil off the bottoms. We will mow that garden too, to both chop up mulch & debris, and to cut down late weeds (especially thistle) that keep growing after the frost.

The property owner has a lot of trees, and one of the reasons I purchased a lawn vacuum was to gather a large enough quantity of leaves to improve the soil there. So it came as quite a surprise to find that almost all of the leaves were missing... ?!? It's been windy a lot lately, and apparently the strong over-night wind storm which shook the house & knocked over my garbage cans several days ago, also blew nearly all of the leaves on the rural property into the adjacent field. There are still some leaves falling, and rain isn't expected until early Tuesday, so I'll gather what I can Monday afternoon. If possible, I hope to till that garden too before the rain arrives.

Oh, and the same over-night wind storm also blew off about 1/4 of the hay on the garlic bed. I always spray the hay down after spreading, and have never had it blown off before - that must have been really strong wind. Fortunately I still had extra hay to replace what was lost. I'll lay some of the rebar rods from the trellises over the hay, to prevent a re-occurrence.

This was the first time we've been out to the rural garden since adding soil to the low end 3 weeks ago. Since then, besides the wind, we had a period of torrential rainfall - 5-6" in 24+ hours. Flooding & erosion was the reason I abandoned the lowest 4100 square feet of the garden, and added soil to what remained. I was pleasantly surprised to see that while there was still a little erosion in the low end, it was much less than before. The raised bed trapped the sediment, which re-settled while still in the garden. I could see where the water flowed, and will add more soil to raise up those areas... but it looks like the drainage issue is almost solved.

 

[flowerbug]

...
This was the first time we've been out to the rural garden since adding soil to the low end 3 weeks ago. Since then, besides the wind, we had a period of torrential rainfall - 5-6" in 24+ hours. Flooding & erosion was the reason I abandoned the lowest 4100 square feet of the garden, and added soil to what remained. I was pleasantly surprised to see that while there was still a little erosion in the low end, it was much less than before. The raised bed trapped the sediment, which re-settled while still in the garden. I could see where the water flowed, and will add more soil to raise up those areas... but it looks like the drainage issue is almost solved.

nice when something works out!

 

[Zeedman]

Still staying busy, as long as the weather holds. All the amendments were added to the gardens at home & tilled under, so those gardens have been put to bed until Spring. That felt really good, we seldom are able to get those gardens prepped in the Fall.

Then DW & I took another load of topsoil from DD's pile (she still has 4-5 yards left) and took it to the rural garden. We added it to the places where erosion was evident. While I was shoveling, DW took down the fencing from the E & W sides, and I pulled out all the poles.

Tomorrow is going to be busy. DD is really anxious to get rid of all her excess topsoil, but the best we can hope for is to get one more load before the rain. Once that has been dumped in the rural garden, we will use the empty trailer to haul the mower (and the leaf vac) to DD's, to pick up the huge amount of leaves falling from her neighbor's row of poplars. We'll haul those leaves BACK to the rural garden, dump them, and hopefully have time to mow everything.