What did you do in the garden today?

[politicalcenter]

I have been starting some butterfly weed from seed. I put them in the fridge for a month and they are just now popping up. I also have some I dug up in the fall and I am waiting to see if they will come back up.

I just love the flowers. They seem to glow. I have some more seed in the fridge just waiting.

I am planning on growing a lot of wildflowers. Indian pinks,cardinal flowers,butterfly weed, hardy hibiscus. wild phlox and anything else I can find that suits my fancy.

My neighbor wants me to start some wild azaleas for him but I never had any luck with them...very difficult.

 

[randr ranch]

If I lived close by I would take that bermuda grass off your hands and make plugs to put in my pasture. It would be great for my goats.

Our goats won't eat it, otherwise I'd keep it. They like all the other weeds and trimmings, especially palm fronds. I don't know why they refuse bermuda.

3goodeggs - LOL. My kids just got caterpillars for a Christmas gift. Little did their grandfather realize he was sending reinforcements for the milkweed/butterfly battle.

 

[Beekissed]

You really, really ought to look into the BTE garden method....those weeds I let populate my garden corner were almost all bermuda grass and it came up like a knife out of butter...never had so much fun removing weeds in my life. Then I covered it over with chips and I doubt I'll have much problem with it again...if it pops up here and there, it's easily removed and barely has a hold on the soil at all..the roots and rhizomes are so shallowly rooted.

 

[randr ranch]

The difficulty of getting rid if bermuda must depend on where you live. I'm finding thick roots 12" deep as I dig. My friend did a BTE garden down the road from me and the bermuda loved it Within a couple months she was having a hard time keeping the bermuda for taking over her veggies and it seems to be getting worse as time goes on. I have a BTE garden, but there is no grass near it.

 

[lazy gardener]

How deep was your friend's chips?

 

[randr ranch]

Not sure. She said 2 landscapers dropped off a truckload each for their small front yard. The paths were so spongy to walk on, it would have had to be 4" plus with cardboard on the bottom. She had patches of it growing before putting the BTE garden on top. Our native soil is really hard, so maybe once it has a hold on that we have the toughest of the toughest growing.

For the bermuda you were pulling, was it growing in that location before the BTE garden or is it trying to spread from nearby?

 

[Beekissed]

The difficulty of getting rid if bermuda must depend on where you live. I'm finding thick roots 12" deep as I dig. My friend did a BTE garden down the road from me and the bermuda loved it Within a couple months she was having a hard time keeping the bermuda for taking over her veggies and it seems to be getting worse as time goes on. I have a BTE garden, but there is no grass near it.

LG had a legitimate question...where the chips are only 2-4 in. the bermuda will find a way, like it did in my garden. Where the chips are deeper, it can't really get a foothold..and didn't in the deeper chipped areas in my garden. Then one also has to stay on top of it, which isn't hard to do in the BTE, as one can clearly see the green of the grass against the brown of the chips and yank it out before it gets good purchase.

I think some folks think the BTE garden method is the cure all and there will be no more weeding chores to be done once it's established, but one still has to be vigilant and aggressive towards weeds and grasses there all the same, it's just less frequent and easier to remove them than in a regular tilled garden method.

I let the bermuda take over one corner of my garden only, just to see how easily it was to remove, how quickly it took over, etc. I had seen vids on YT about people complaining that the BTE method nurtures the bermuda and how their gardens were filled with it, so I wanted to do my own experiment on it. I did. I found it was easily preventable by using the correct thickness of chips~as evidenced by the other areas in my garden that DID have the correct depth of chips and was devoid of the bermuda. And I found it was easily pulled up if it did get established, so really no excuse to have it going on in there...just pull it up, replace deeper chips on that area.

It also helps to have some sort of edging on the garden that separates it from the surrounding lawn, though it will still creep in, it won't be as easy for it to do so. I have edging of landscape timbers around my garden and it still managed to make an appearance there but, again, it was so easily removed and prevented that it was hard to see why folks can't seem to deal with it.

On the original vid of the BTE garden method, Paul G. just uses a rake to remove the starts of weeds and grasses, showing just how easy it was to remove them from the chips. Paul walks that garden daily and probably several times daily, so he's able to keep on top of it better than most, but even for those who only get to visit the garden once a week for any length of time, part of that time should be spent searching for and eliminating any upstarts of grasses and weeds. That's just a part of regular maintenance of a garden, no matter the method used.

 

[lazy gardener]

All excellent points, Bee. I'd like to add that we, (myself included, and the most likely of all to have this mindset) seem to think that more is better, and too much of anything is just about right. Does it come from our affluence? I think it's certainly fed by that. If a small garden is good. And it is, and will produce an incredible abundance if managed correctly. Then, a bigger garden must be better. And a huge garden will be the best. Sometimes, we can get caught up in the mindset of competing for the biggest, most productive garden in the neighborhood, even to the point of it producing so much food that we can't possibly process it all, nor can we keep up with the daily and weekly maintenance. Add the typical American life style of running here and there, spending weekends in pursuit of relaxation or even getting caught up on household tasks after a busy work week is not compatible with garden maintenance. So, I'd like to throw out the challenge: Look very carefully at your current gardening practices. Did you have too much of any one vegetable last year? Did the zucchini get past the succulent stage, and become baseball bats or small canoes? Were you on vacation just when the beans or corn were demanding a harvest?

So, I can try to: pile that mulch on DEEP, allow more space between groups of plants, cut down on the number of plants. I think that in order to thwart plants from growing up through the mulch, 6" is a good amount to work with. A smaller foot print of garden will be easier to maintain. Will require less time, less mulch, less water.

 

[randr ranch]

BeeKissed, Consider yourself blessed that you find it hard to see why others can't seem to deal with it. I have watched the BTE videos and read a great deal about it. I'm not knocking it, just saying that it is not the solution for established bermuda where I live. It may help bermuda not get a strong hold when invading, but it will not smoother an existing bermuda lawn (years of growth in our hard soil) no matter how patchy from growing up through it. I agree with you that the BTE method is not a cure all, which is why I dig up up the bermuda and sift out the roots first. Then I only have to "defend" the edges from invading roots or runners. I like to use a 6" deep airspace left between the lawn and garden. A great gardening method in on area of the country might not work or need adapting to use where the soil and or climate is different.

 

[Beekissed]

I agree, LG. We cut back on the total size of our garden, went to the BTE method so we could plant and grow more efficiently in the smaller space but I'll not be limiting the number of things I plant...I can actually fit more into this kind of garden due to the ability to not have to have rows in which to plant and due to the chip layer giving more nutrition and water to the root systems.

This BTE garden, once established, served to cut down on my total work load and time expended in the garden, while yielding more food per plant and square foot of space.