The Battle Aftermath...Mopping up Pockets of Resistance

After the carpet bombing of the dandelion invasion a couple of weeks ago, I think I can go back to a more organic, manual battle of the weeds.

See those pretty yellow flowers at the top? They're evil. Evil, I tell you. 

Left alone, by the afternoon they will be a cloud of weed seed on a stalk. A slightest breeze will set hundreds of seeds loose across your lawn and it seems like they have a germination rate of 99.9%

So, now that I've hit 'em hard with poison, here's the two-prong approach to dandelion control...

Every time I cross the lawn, if I see those flowers, they're plucked and thrown away immediately.

Secondly, each time I head out to garden, I've set a goal of uprooting a minimum of 12 plants.

I stick the blade of the hoe in at the edge of the plant...

...push it in with my foot, lever it up and pull it out by the roots.

Since I'm about to mow the lawn, I just toss it on the ground to suck it up with the mower.

Today, I got 17 uprooted. We'll see how this new strategy goes.

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Repelling a Chinese Invasion

I don't grow them but my neighbors on each side of me do. That would be the Chinese elm.

They're pretty trees but their seeds go everywhere and make stubborn seedlings.

Those weeds can be tough to pull out with their deep roots.  I've got this one next to the driveway, so I need to get it out right away.

The hoe just isn't getting it done. There's something hard underground that bends the blade.

I dig in deeper and find it's not a seedling but a sprout coming up from a thick root.   I get the loppers and cut each end.

After fighting for several minutes, I get it out. Just look at the size of that root.

Darryl
Copyright 216 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

To Spray or Not to Spray, That is the Question

Maybe I'm like the Danish prince, haunted by dead plants past so that I want my current crop to do well. For the most part, I'd say I'm pretty organic. In the back yard, I weed pretty much all by hand.  The front lawn, however, can hide massive amounts of intruders that, left on their own, would pretty much take over from the grass.

Some lawn weeds...like mallow, oxalys, or this as yet unidentified weed above...can be pulled with a fork and some elbow grease.

The dandelion, on the other hand, can quickly get out of hand. 

In this year of drought, many of my neighbors have completely ignored their lawns. I've let mine go, too, but still tried to keep it in a kind of 'mothballs' situation, waiting for the rain to return.  

With all the lawns in our area ignored, dandelion seeds have spread like crazy and when the green came back, so did hundreds of these little lawn killers.

In years past, I could dig in with a trowel and at least keep my head above water. This year, I stopped counting a one hundred.

OK, I hate to do it, but the only way I'm going to have a chance with this lawn is a judicious application of weed killer.

Fortunately, the biology of a dandelion means I can just apply a few drops to the center of the plant, which is basically a funnel, where the poison will settle into the interior of the plant and not disturb the grass around it.

Yes, I know you can pick them and eat the leaves but I also need some control of what I grow and these are beyond that point.  Hopefully, I can get a handle on this huge, new crop and go back to hand weeding for the future.

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The Weeds of Winter

Still not a lot to do in the garden these days but the weeds don't take the season off. 

A trowel helps me dig these out of the dirt.

In the rose garden, out front, this Chinese elm seedling has camoflauged itself within the roses. 

At this size, the root is very deep and it is impossible to hand-pull out of the ground, so I dig as deep as I can with my trowel.

This is as much as of the root as I was able to get. I hope it's enough because these weeds are very hard to get rid of completely once they take hold.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

A Plant that Grows Where You Don't Want It...

...is a weed.  Well, above, they're herbs but when they block the sidewalk, they have to be treated like weeds and ripped out back to their planter.

Speaking of weeds, that's this week's chore.

This spurge in our front yard rose garden is so big, it's hard to tell there the weed ends and the lawn begins.

Spurge is pretty easy to pull, a trowel helps me find the root stem.

Once I do that, it's not a big deal to bunch it up in my hand and uproot it.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Trying to Give the Babies Some Room To Grow

A couple of weeks ago, I spread out a leftover bag of grass seed on the lawn. While from afar, it doesn't look to bad, up close, you can see a lot of weeds.

Here is some oxalis, which is relatively harmless.

Some dandelions, like this one, hide very well in the grass. Left alone, they will pretty much take over and spread like wildfire.

I need to get in there and start getting the intruders out so my grass seedlings can grow into a thick, lush mat. I'm also trying to go organic as much as possible and, while it would be very easy to just spray Roundup on it, I will try to hand pull the weeds.

Tools for today are a round edge hoe and a small fork.

The hoe is shoved under the weed to get under the roots and the fork finishes up by plucking it out and putting it into the bin.

It's backbreaking work, so I get my hand-held trowel and see how easy it is on my knees. Turns out, it's much easier than the hoe and fork method.

About a third of the lawn is done which also fills about a third of the green waste bin.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Evicting Unwelcome Visitors

Kind of slow gardening weekend. Not much to report, except for hand-pulling weeds, like this oak tree seedling that popped up between a camellia and the herb garden.

Probably a scrub jay planting an acorn caused this to grow.

Luckily, the ground is well-tilled and a simple pull on the stem gets it all out (wear gloves, the leaves are sharp).

Off to the trash with you!

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

New Faces and Old Invaders

Popping up in the garden this week, these pasilla chile seedlings are making their debut. I'm excited for these because they are extremely tasty, not too spicy (but more than a bell pepper), are great stuffed, and used for chile rellenos.

Peppers are some of my favorite crops to grow. Pound for pound, it's hard to find another fruit that provides so much savory flavor and health benefits.

I also have this Anaheim chile plant that is showing its first fruit.

Another very tasty crop will be onions, which this group of seedlings will be producing later this season.

In a crack on the patio bricks, an oregano seed has taken root.

It's not where I want it, so that makes it a weed. Out it goes!

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved.

Dastardly Dandelion

I've got a small zucchini plant doing it's best to survive from fall, through winter, and now spring. I'm willing to give it a chance at a good warm season but this darn dandelion grew right underneath it.

Do you think I can get the weed out without killing the zuke? Let's see...

Gingerly, I put my trowel between the two plants. I wiggle it back and forth a bit to get down to the roots and pull up on the weed.

Success!

Now, let's see if this poor little plant can survive the shock and produce some good fruit for us. Like they say, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

A Gallery of Ne'er Do Wells

We're on the cusp of starting the harvest season here at the Cheapskate's garden. Looks like we might have a slightly paltry first crop but with overseeding and warm weather, summer should be producing something more like a bumper crop.

In the meantime, I'm spending time working with the plants that REALLY do well here, the weeds.  As I pull them up, let's see what's clogging up my garden this week.

The Scourge of Spurge...this little guy is a bit on the nasty side. Not too bad if you get it early but let it ride for a week...

...and you get these mats along with deep, hard-to-pull-up roots.  Not to mention, it has a sticky sap that gets all over your hands and resists efforts to pull up with a glove.

Grass sprouts up here and there. Pull as soon as possible to avoid deep rooted clumps.

Oxalis (pictured at the top of the page) have spring-loaded exploding seed pods (really!) and are impossible to eradicate completely.

Oak trees are native in my area. Squirrels, jays, and woodpeckers stash the acorns everywhere, leading to this unique weed...the oak tree seedling.

Finally, palm trees. Enough already. I spend more time pulling up these free-sprouting seedlings than anything else.

Here, you can see the little seed too.  That's one more palm tree that won't be growing in Southern California.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

While the Cheapskate's Away...

We've been on an island in the Caribbean for a week, it's always interesting to see what the garden's been doing while we've been away. To start, the last cymbidium of the season bloomed, this yellow one above.

The zucchini plants will keep their place as the first to be harvested, I'm sure, but the radishes are also giving them a run for their money.

Our cornfield has grown a foot while we've been gone.

This hanging dendrobium is really doing well.

The plants have been behaving well but the weeds are sneaking back in. A pinch at the base of the plant is all it takes to get it out, roots and all.

This single rose has really broken out the blooms...

...but it looks like another deadheading session is in this weekend's plans.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved