Nothing relaxes me more than spending time gardening. Pull out a few weeds, transplant some seedlings and just breathe the fresh air. A good day of shoveling and some new blisters give me a sense of accomplishment that I do not get from a day at work. I have also found the ultimate gardener breakfast. A poached egg on half an avocado on top of toast. It is delicious and keeps you full till lunch.
This year my parents order a load of manure and they kindly allowed me to put a good, thick layer on the garden. My mother and myself got a good workout transporting it to the garden and covering every inch. As I am gardening on a slope we created a retaining wall out of sheet metal and put the extra mushroom manure there. My fantastic father and brother rototilled it in and leveled it out. Then I stomped out the rows to make four 4×16 feet beds. The uniformity makes the OCD part of my very happy.
I had read that vinegar can be used to kill weeds but most of the recipes use Epsom salt and soap. I am not really comfortable with adding salt to my soil. Not so fun fact: You can poison a field by adding salt to it as most plants cannot grow in salty conditions. So I just sprayed the plants with undiluted white vinegar on a sunny day. The results were impressive as you can see from the photos but not lasting. The only part of the plant that was effected was the leaves and the plants could still come back.
My next idea for weed reduction was using bark mulch. Our neighbours had cut down some trees last fall and they let us have the wood chips. Lets just say I have an almost unlimited supply. I put a good inch of mulch on all the pathways which has been well worth the effort. Mulch retains water better than soil and prevent compaction of the soil. Most weeds struggle to grow under mulch and I suspect that the slugs and snails also don’t enjoy the rough texture. There is the added benefit of people knowing which areas of the garden are paths are which are not.
When we replaced our skylights on the house, my father saved one for me and I have been using it as a greenhouse. It works great for seedlings and I can raise it by adding more bricks to the area where the plastic sits on. I also put copper pipes around the outside to keep the slugs out and it has worked wonderfully. For the tomato plants I used an old window for a greenhouse. Unfortunately I had not realized this was a ‘special’ window but my father soon found me a non-special replacement.
I will stop chatting now and let you enjoy the photos.
livingandlearning123 