fewer buttercups, more sunflowers
About three weeks ago, I got stuck into this stretch of garden. I weeded and weeded and pulled the invasive flower bulbs out and planted tomatoes and freed up the lemony-yellow rose to actually grow and bloom. I got as far as the red rose, starting from the left.
The remainder looked like this three weeks ago, and since then the buttercup and dock and tobacco and grasses have got a lot bigger.
Today, home in quarantine with the shortest child (the bug I'd been warned about but not escaped it seems, though she was perky enough to garden with me), we weeded and weeded and weeded and then planted and now it looks like this:
In the background is a Red Russian sunflower, I think and in the foreground is a gooseberry bush. Another superb tasting fruit which is never available in the supermarkets.
Lest I consider the mountain of housework awaiting me inside as a priority, here are some photos of other parts of the garden also in need of hard work. The picture below is out the front and while I kind of like the lush abandoned look, it doesn't leave room for my pumpkins to grow, or indeed for the last three to even be planted.
You can just see the rhubarb here, but you can't actually reach in to harvest any. I made the mistake of planting this rather quickly two years ago in a spot with well established perennial weeds. Survivors like convulvulus, dock, thistles, a spidery invasive thing and of course, creeping buttercup. I need to dig the rhubarb out and do something serious about the weeds before anything goes in again.
After three years of idly planning a superb new (but actually brilliantly recycled of course) compost, not one which was a heap below the treehut which is a really useless place to have a compost, yesterday I caved and bought some plastic at Mitre 10. Now we have a compost heap which is getting properly hot and over summer we will redesign the base of the tree hut to make it more child-centred. This compost bin is now living beside the oppressed rhubarb. I have thoughts of moving it on to the newly cleared oppression site (after I've removed the rhubarb of course) to really kill the perennial weeds in a couple of months' time.
This is Brighid's garden. Nobody offered it to her that I can recall, she just claimed it. So I had to get resource consents before every change I made to this garden this afternoon. The onions which are harvested to the side were removed from the garden after a particularly lengthy consent process. This garden looks much drier than the same time last year and tonight after this photo I put the hose on the garden. I haven't mulched the garlic with peastraw because some book said not to (have done other years though) but the kale and broccoli definitely need some moisture retention help. I was disappointed that my Iceland poppies were not flowering but on closer inspection, that is because Brighid is deheading them before they even bloom.
The remainder looked like this three weeks ago, and since then the buttercup and dock and tobacco and grasses have got a lot bigger.
Today, home in quarantine with the shortest child (the bug I'd been warned about but not escaped it seems, though she was perky enough to garden with me), we weeded and weeded and weeded and then planted and now it looks like this:
In the background is a Red Russian sunflower, I think and in the foreground is a gooseberry bush. Another superb tasting fruit which is never available in the supermarkets.
Lest I consider the mountain of housework awaiting me inside as a priority, here are some photos of other parts of the garden also in need of hard work. The picture below is out the front and while I kind of like the lush abandoned look, it doesn't leave room for my pumpkins to grow, or indeed for the last three to even be planted.
You can just see the rhubarb here, but you can't actually reach in to harvest any. I made the mistake of planting this rather quickly two years ago in a spot with well established perennial weeds. Survivors like convulvulus, dock, thistles, a spidery invasive thing and of course, creeping buttercup. I need to dig the rhubarb out and do something serious about the weeds before anything goes in again.
After three years of idly planning a superb new (but actually brilliantly recycled of course) compost, not one which was a heap below the treehut which is a really useless place to have a compost, yesterday I caved and bought some plastic at Mitre 10. Now we have a compost heap which is getting properly hot and over summer we will redesign the base of the tree hut to make it more child-centred. This compost bin is now living beside the oppressed rhubarb. I have thoughts of moving it on to the newly cleared oppression site (after I've removed the rhubarb of course) to really kill the perennial weeds in a couple of months' time.
This is Brighid's garden. Nobody offered it to her that I can recall, she just claimed it. So I had to get resource consents before every change I made to this garden this afternoon. The onions which are harvested to the side were removed from the garden after a particularly lengthy consent process. This garden looks much drier than the same time last year and tonight after this photo I put the hose on the garden. I haven't mulched the garlic with peastraw because some book said not to (have done other years though) but the kale and broccoli definitely need some moisture retention help. I was disappointed that my Iceland poppies were not flowering but on closer inspection, that is because Brighid is deheading them before they even bloom.
Comments