Saturday, September 19, 2009

Wild and Tame Plants

I went down the road, towards the main road, to get a picture of a garden that I saw each time we went to town. In front of the garden, there were wild snow berries and a red burning bush. It was a pretty combination.

The second picture is a close-up of the snow berries. They are all over this area. They are slightly sweet, but have no flavor. The snow berries are rather pithy and would not amount to much if cooked.

I went up to the front door of the house where the garden was and a dog came running up to me barking, but I ignored it like Caesar Milan, "Dog Whisperer", says to do and it worked! The dog sniffed me and then walked away! Whew!!

Anyway, no one was home so I went back out to the road and took this picture over the fence. They have two pumpkins growing on the fence (one is seen here), just hanging on. Like a lot of gardens at the end of the season, they have weeds--don't you feel better now? Almost everybody has weeds in their garden by the end of summer. There wasn't much left in this garden besides the pumpkins.

This year my Dad did not turn over his garden, but put a thick layer of mulch over the ground and planted through it. He was amazed that he has had very few weeds.

I found that removing the nutsedge and bermuda, then laying down thick layers of wet paper or cardboard, and putting thick layers of straw has been good enough that I have few weeds, too. I have had about 2 scraggly weeds per month in each of my new garden beds! That I can handle!

2 comments:

  1. You are a TRUE gardener adventurer. LOOK at you knocking on doors, ignoring strange dogs and peering over fences and taking picture! I really enjoyed this post.

    Actually the whole vacation posting has been a pleasure to read. It is unbelievably beautiful where your parents live. too bad we can't have that here in Clovis, huh?

    I also love how you spend so much time with your dad on walks. I also emailed Dave to remind him to water your garden. I don't know if he ever saw it-I sent it to his work email.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am glad that you are enjoying my vacation! And, thank you for reminding Dave to water my garden. It is beautiful here--you just give up a long growing season for the rain and snow it takes to make it so green.

    ReplyDelete