Get Them Before They Go to Seed, Mallow Edition

09 Jul 2011 3 Comments

by katsmama in environmentalism, gardening Tags: ,


Sometimes called wild geranium. Winner of the worst weed in my yard contest.

Mallow is one of my least favorite weeds in my yard- I mean, I can live with dandelion most of the time, I don’t consider clover a weed at all, bindweed is annoying, and thistles hurt, but mallow is like that kid in class who always wants to share his journal entry out loud and it goes on and on, or like a raspberry seed in your teeth, or the wind that picks up as you’re leaving the park. It gets on my last nerve…

Mallow has deep, branching roots, so unlike dandelion, where sometimes a mighty pull can get up most of of the root, usually when I pull mallow, even when the soil is nice and moist, the plant just breaks off at the crown, and then comes back.

Supposedly it is edible. I guess that is one way to get rid of it…sigh. I just hate it.

Get Them Before They Go To Seed, Bindweed Edition

09 Jul 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in environmentalism, gardening Tags: , ,


Morning Glory and Moonflower's uncivilized cousin- bind weed.

It is the time of year for bind weed to bloom in my yard- cute little white or pink cups on vines with heart shaped leaves. They’re everywhere, and because I avoid herbicides it take a lot of careful hand pulling. The strawberries, the namesakes of the blog, are especially bad with bind weed this year, I suspect because I let them get away last year, and let them go to seed. Ack!
Bind weed spreads from seed and from any tiny stem or root, so it is really difficult to get rid of entirely. There is supposed to be a biological control, a disease or fungus that only attacks it, but I don’t know if it is on the market-I don’t honestly even know if it is anything more than a rumor. The best I can do is detente, I pull it when I see it, carefully tracing the stems back to the ground if possible, and pulling out as much of the root as possible.
Since it can grow back from roots and stems, bindweed is the one organic matter I don’t usually put on the compost pile- I put it in a bag in my trash can.
It has gotten so that when I see morning glory, the domesticated cousin, my immediate reaction is to think they are giant mutant bind weed, and they most be destroyed. That is why I no longer plant morning glories.
I can occasionally rake or roll up mats of bind weed, and that is the most satisfying thing ever! Well,  not ever, but pretty satisfying. However, it is usually tangled up in stems of strawberries,  or roses, which is the worst, because you can’t just yank it out, you have to untangle it. Actually, the worst is when it is so tangled around a thistle that you don’t see the thistle, so you grab it and get pricked. Argh…

Bag Those Apples

27 Jun 2011 1 Comment

by katsmama in environmentalism, food, gardening Tags: , ,


 

We have an old standard apple tree that came with the house- don’t know the variety, but it is sour, a pie apple, rather than a sweet one. I have also planted a yellow delicious, which is my favorite.

Most years, the big apple tree produces more than we could ever eat- we give away bags of them, and I made apple sauce last year, but many, many go on the ground, and in the compost pile. I don’t spray for worms, and because I don’t kill the worms, there are more worms every year.

I’ve been researching what to do, because even though we don’t love the pie apples, the golden delicious, which is my favorite, is just getting big enough to produce- we had two apples from it last year, but this year it bloomed well, and there are a bunch (get the number) I still don’t want to spray poison, so I researched what to do to get organic apples. Organic apples with no worms, I mean; mine have been organic for years, with a nice shot of protein…

Most websites I found suggested sprays and traps and pheromones, which I don’t really want to mess with. Expensive and time consuming.  Then I came across this guy (http://www.finegardening.com/pages/g00062.asp)at Fine Gardening magazine, and got a paradigm shift- instead of trying to kill all the bugs, why not just prevent the bugs from getting to the apples?

 

Put staples in the edges of the bags while sitting in the shade, then slip the bag on the apple and do the last staple.

So, it’s late June, 4-5 weeks after my apples bloomed. I go through, select the biggest apple in each cluster that I can reach, and staple a paper lunch bag around it. The apple will grow inside the bag, moths won’t get to it to lay their eggs, and by picking off the smaller apples in the cluster, the chosen one will get bigger. The paper bags are kind of ugly, but I am hoping they will fade into the background- I’m not hosting a garden tour or anything.

I will start with the golden delicious-(it’s my favorite, did I mention that?) and then put bags on the big tree for as long as my patience (and my stapler) holds out. I bought a package of 100 bags, but I don’t think I’ll get that far. This fall, I’ll update how it goes.

I’m not killing the slugs, I’m inviting them for a beer, then they die.

24 Jun 2011 2 Comments

by katsmama in environmentalism, gardening, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,


Homegrown, organic beautiful, and eaten by me, not by neighborhood gastropods.

We have been having such a wet June (global weirding, or is this normal?) that the slugs are having a field day. My strawberries are getting ripe, and the slugs have been eating half of them. Now, I’m a generous soul, if the slugs would eat some berries, I wouldn’t mind so much, but they seem to eat half of each one.
My MIL has taught me the solution- cheap, grocery-store-type beer in a saucer at ground level. She saves her margarine tubs for this, but I’m too snobby for margarine, so I use salsa containers. You have to bury them so the rim is just at ground level- the slugs are attracted to the carbon dioxide coming off the beer, then they drown in it.

The Boy checks the trap the next day- "EEW! there's beer on my hand!" Our take, a couple of slugs and a spider. Collateral damage- sorry spidey.

I will also set out board traps- pieces of scrap wood on the ground- the slugs hide under them during the day, so I can scrape them off into the compost pile. My friend Schnied’s mom feeds slugs to her goldfish, but I think these slugs are too big for my fish.

There’s been a radio ad recently that just curls my hair- a major pesticide company telling me I need to kill the bugs that are eating my precious garden crops. It just makes me mad- they want me to dust poison on the food I want to eat. Grrrrr. With beer, they die, but it is their choice. And not all of them die…maybe I’m still conflicted.

I’ll add new beer to my traps before we leave for the weekend. Last year, we barely had slug damage, I think, because the garter snakes stepped up to the plate. I realize that for some people, snakes are worse than slugs, but garter snakes are slug eating machines. And you hardly see them- we’ve got great ground cover, which is good snake habitat.

Bloom Day- Look at those Peonies!

15 Jun 2011 2 Comments

by katsmama in gardening Tags: ,


We have lived in this house about 10 years, and there are certain things that the previous owners did that I just have to wonder about. For example, they crammed about 4 different rose bushes into a square about 2 feet by 2 feet at the end of the driveway. It looks great for about a week in June and a week in September, but then it grabs passersby with spiny tentacles the rest of the year.
They also put Russian sage under the mailbox- a sub-shrub that gets 6 feet tall and 6 feet wide, and is extremely attractive to bees, right next to where the mail goes.
What I have to approve of, though, is that they put peonies lined up next to the driveway. I don’t think they are fancy named varieties, just dark pink, light pink and white, but they have bloomed reliably every June that we have lived here, with virtually no care, other than pulling away the brown leaves and stalks at the end of winter. And this year, I didn’t even get around to that.

Mock orange- gets to be 6-8 feet tall, and has amazing-smelling white blossoms.

Mid June is the best time for blooms around in my yard, peonies and roses, and the herbs, and honeysuckle and the mock orange, and the bearded iris are finishing but the Japanese iris are budding out. I love it.

Blanche Sandman honeysuckle, worm's eye view.

Through an accident of fate, we are not taking our vacation until early July, and I am so glad  I get to stick around and enjoy the best flowers of the year.

The bees love the thyme and chive flowers- I wonder what the honey would taste like?

Asparagus Update

27 May 2011 1 Comment

by katsmama in food, gardening, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,


The shoots of Asparagus in the new, horseshoe-shaped bed are up- thinner than pencils, but they show me the plants are alive. I’ll carefully layer more compost on top (carefully, because I don’t want to knock anything over). I’ve had to grub out some thistles that like the compost and moisture, too. Once the trench is up to ground level, I will put on a thick layer of mulch to keep down the weeds.

Little asparagus shoots, before I dug out the grass and thistles.

Burr Oaks are smarter than you and I

23 May 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in gardening Tags: , ,


 

I have a burr oak tree in the back yard- it anchors the xeric bed, looking tall and beautiful on the end by the swing set. It was exactly as tall as the Girl when she was 3, and now it is taller than my tape measure.  Every year, I examine the buds in mid-May, and wonder if it has died.

This tree is smarter than I am, and smarter than the other trees. I planted it because it is a western native, but I have since learned that it isn’t aRockyMountainnative, it’s from theBlack Hills. Trees that leaf out too early inSouth Dakotaget snowed on, so the burr oak has evolved to wait.

The thing is, a lot of times, trees that leaf out too early inColoradoget snowed on, too. Our average last frost date is May 15, and this year, I wouldn’t have been too surprised if our recent rainy days hadn’t turned into snowy mornings, killing off apple blossoms and breaking branches off ashes, and maples and other more hopeful trees. Nope- the burr oak knows what it’s doing.

This little leaf is waiting for spring before it unfolds all the way.

Bloom Day

16 May 2011 1 Comment

by katsmama in gardening, Uncategorized Tags: ,


Wish I'd planted these lilacs underneath my window, instead of way back by the fence.

Last year, there were enough currants on this bush to make jelly- see, even on bloom day, I think in terms of food.

The tulips and daffodilas are faded, and the iris and peonies are waiting in the wings, so right now it’s a show that belongs to the cherry tree and the lilac.

Tiny proto-cherries, Northstar variety.

A visit to my local nursery

12 May 2011 2 Comments

by katsmama in gardening, goldfish pond, Uncategorized Tags: , ,


Mother’s day seems to be the official day around here to buy plants, even though the average last frost date isn’t until the 15th. We went hiking on the actual holiday, but I stopped at my favorite local nursery after work today. I have ordered a bunch of plants from a friend who has started seeds for a school fundraiser, but I had to fill in the gaps, and pick up the floating water plants that I can’t overwinter, but Gulley’s can.

Water lettuce and water hyacinth- I picked the biggest ones they had in the bucket. The lettuce is more than a foot across.

When the girl was a baby, we would go to Gulley’s once a week in the winter, just to enjoy the greenhouse- they actually had a Koi pond inside, with a bridge overlooking the water, and turtles basking…they have removed it, because it really doesn’t make sense to have several hundred square feet of retail space devoted to goldfish. Especially when they didn’t even sell goldfish.
So, on Monday afternoon, I got 2 kinds of tomato, a kohlrabi plant,(because my kids keep insisting that they only like the broccoli stems, not the florettes, and kohlrabi is basically broccoli stem) a “Wee be little” pumpkin, and a jalapeno and a sweet pepper.

Just a box of plants- pond plants in the bag, everything else in 2"pots.

I have always hated green peppers, but if I am trying to get my kids to try new things, I should also…and notice how much better home-grown tomatoes taste than grocery store ones? Maybe it’s the same with peppers.
I resisted the huge selection of herbs- especially the scented geraniums, which they had several varieties of, but I have one already, a rose-scented, and no space to overwinter any more than that.

I went ahead and planted everything when the temperature was 80- then looked at the weather forecast- rain/snow mixture predicted for last night. Curses!

When I went to bed the thermometer was at 40, and it was sprinkling. I covered the plants with big clay pots, just in case it did freeze. When I woke up today, it was cool and rainy, but no snow on the ground.

Come on, weather, warm up so the tomatoes can be happy...

The goal- get them before they go to seed.

08 May 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in gardening, lawn, Uncategorized Tags:


 

Plenty of nectar for bees, deep roots that accumulate nutrients, salad greens for the adventurous. What's not to love?

It does not fail- whenever my mom comes to visit, she comments that there is an excellent product called weed and feed, and it kills all the weeds, and fertilizes, too, and there’s even a generic version, if I think the name-brand is too expensive.
Argh. I’m polite, she is my mother, after all, and I say something like, “Oh, yes, we’ll have to look into it.” I don’t tell her that I don’t use pesticides because my kids play on the lawn, or because our storm sewers drain to the river, or because lawns are the leading cause of non-point water pollution. Saying that to her amounts to an attack- didn’t her kids play on the lawn? Her storm sewers drain to the entire Eastern United States (she’s in the mountains- headwaters of the Arkansas river…)
She doesn’t have any dandelions, though.
We’ve got enough for everyone.
Since I won’t use poison, I have to work on weeds the old fashioned way- with a paring knife, or sometimes a digger, or sometimes just bare hands. I have filled buckets this spring- they go into the compost pile, with a layer of dead leaves on top, and a scoop of soil. I am not sure if my compost gets hot enough to kill dandelion seeds- I haven’t been too scientific about it.
This year, for the first time, the kids have helped. I demonstrated how to lever the plants up at the crown, and offered to pay a dollar per bucket. It worked for a while- although I did see the boy blowing the seed heads off one that we missed. I don’t know what he wished for. More dandelions, I guess.

I realize that just popping them up out of the ground doesn’t get rid of them- they’re perennial, they have deep roots, they’ll keep coming back. But after May, they aren’t so bad- no yellow flowers bringing down property values, just green leaves. They aren’t prickly like thistle, or annoying like bindweed, or crazy making like mallow ( my least favorite weed) they’re just green.

Edited to add: My mom is really quite wonderful. Aside from a blindspot to herbicides, she is super smart, nice and caring. She also has dial up internet, so it’s possible she will never read this.  Also, I noticed today that some dandelions in the front yard have gone to seed. Curses!

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