As I walked around the garden today, here’s what I observed. It was a little warmer than it has been recently, in the low 80’s. The forecast had said possible rain, but as it got closer to today, the threat seemed to decrease and although it looked threatening all day, no rain came.
Weed Activity
I thought I started to see a little browning of the crabgrass that has made a home in my back lawn.
The ends of the crabgrass seem like they are starting to brown to me. I’ll have to keep observing in the coming days to see if I’m just seeing things.
There are a ton of “grass flowers”, for lack of a better term.
The weedy mess that has come through the wood chips is a nuisance. Apparently the wood chips weren’t put on thick enough to stop all that green mess from sprouting and growing. Sections like this are spread throughout the garden in certain spots. They add a look of cutter and messiness that I do not like. It detracts from the overall garden.
I have a couple of large weeds that have gone to seed that I have to get rid of before they drop an enormous amount of seed into the ground. Like this Lamb’s Quarter, for example.
Anyway, I haven’t done that much weeding in the garden. In time I don’t want to really do any weeding, but I do expect to do repeated and frequent cultivating. I’ve started to separate the two in my mind. Cultivating is akin to mowing the soil. It is not a strenuous activity and the way I want my garden/farm set up, it will be just like mowing the soil. It’s not about removing weeds, it’s keeping the soil airy, loose, and weed free. Weeding is getting rid of plants that have grown.
Grass Growth
I have been keeping up fairly well with mowing the back lawn. I sometimes cut it each day. Sometimes every 3rd or 4th day. But it does get mowed often. Today I noticed a lot of dead areas on the left side towards the back of the lawn.
However, right next to those dead patches is very thick and lush Kentucky Blue Grass, as this lawn was started last fall from sod, but this is the first day I really noticed those patches on the left side that need work done. I’m hesitant to overseed because I don’t have pure Kentucky Bluegrass seed to use. I just bought some premium Perennial Rye grass that is supposed to regenerate itself like Kentucky Blue Grass does. I also have 2x Rapid Grass that has some Bluegrass mixed into its formula. Perhaps I’ll try to overseed with a combination of these and see how it looks. I don’t want a patchy look of obviously different grass to the lawn, but I don’t want these dead spots either.
I’ve also overseeded the very front lawn with my new premium Perennial Rye. I first scalped that lawn with a strimmer. It was overgrown and a reel mower will have a very hard time with that long stuff, so I string trim. I don’t own a rotary mower so to cut back lots of top growth, my string trimmer is my tool of choice. I started to use my homie to dig out a few areas where there were more weeds than grass, but that was very labor intensive. So I made a mental note that that isn’t the way to work on my lawn. From now on, if I want to get rid of weeds in the grass I will use herbicides.
There are a few sections of this lawn where there is an abundance of clover so I used the strimmer the scalp those back as much as possible. So after all this cutting with my strimmer I used a blower and then a rake to remove that loose debris off of the lawn. The rake was very labor intensive. I was sweating profusely afterwards and very worn out. My bow rake’s handle is not long enough to be ergonomically efficient for me so that was likely one reason it was such a strenuous activity. But, a bow rake isn’t the best tool for this job. People use a mechanical de-thatcher and I can now fully understand why.
I also have a manual aerator which I proceeded to use next, after a rest. This was very hard work as well. Frankly I truly wonder if aerating is needed at all. It’s not like there is compaction on that lawn as it’s next to my fence and nobody walks on it except the occasional dog.
I’m going to forego aerating on any further overseeding that I do. If you don’t have a better tool to do the job, I don’t think it’s worth the work. I’m going to look into getting a de-thatcher as well. I know dead grass, weeds a debris mat down in the lawn and having a machine pull up all that junk so new grass seed can have good soil contact seems worth it to me.
Anyway, after everything, I sprinkled some of the new premium perennial rye grass seed down. They I used a plastic rake and raked over the lawn to help push the seed down further in the lawn so it hopefully will hit some open soil. I then watered it in. I knew rain was in the forecast for the next couple of days and hopefully I will see some germination by the weekend.
Plant Growth & General Health
The flowers and plants are still doing great. The celosia I planted from seed is thriving and the flowers have such unusual shapes. Some of them almost look like coral. The bumblebees love them
Food Crops
The tomatoes continue to grow. From now on I plan on doing heavy pruning on my tomatoes. It just suits me better to have a well manicured plant. I’d rather have more plants with less fruit on them if those plants are well maintained with staking, pruning, etc.
The brandy wine tomatoes have still not started to ripen. To use the stair railing as a trellis, it would have been better to plant the tomatoes closer to the wall of steps.
Note: When planting against an edge – wall or fence – plant very close to this edge
Insect & Wildlife Activity
As much as I thought the yellowjacket activity was winding down, this is not the case. Although the activity is different than it was a few weeks ago. The yellowjackets do not seem to be in the open as much, but if there is a disturbance in the soil or I mow the lawn – they know. Within a couple of minutes they show up. In this short video, would can see a bunch of them flying around the grass after I had mowed it. It’s insane how like a dozen of them showed up within a couple of minutes like I rang the dinner bell.
Reflections
Although temperatures are dropping and the days are getting shorter, there hasn’t been much change in the garden yet. hot weather crops like tomatoes and peppers definitely do not grow as quickly, but other plants are still growing very well. I seeded some cold weather leafy green like spinach, lettuce and bok choy and will transplant them into rows when they get a little bigger.
And I picked the one large pumpkin that grew from the 3 pumpkin plants I transplanted in the front garden
If I plant pumpkins next season, I would choose a smaller variety to hopefully get more pumpkins and I would start them a little earlier than I did this year. Maybe in May. I also would like to see how they do on a trellis because on the ground, one plant takes up more space than I’d like to devote to just one plant.
Still too many yellowjackets around to do any serious soil work or moving sod or anything like that. I want to move the strawberries and the gladiolus, but I wouldn’t feel safe with the yellowjacket activity all that digging would encourage.