Well, I made it to two posts in a row. For the last few years that’s a milestone, not necessarily one to be proud of but a milestone nonetheless.
It’s the first week I’m back taking work seriously, and as such my time outside has dropped off a metaphorical cliff. Unfortunately with the milder weather and all the irrigating I have been doing it is also a ‘blink and the weeds are huge’ time of year. Exhibit A…
I am choosing to focus on the lovely meadow view rather than acknowledging that every one of those yellow flowers is a weed seed spreading nightmare waiting to happen.
I am also choosing not to focus on the fact that in my last post, mowing the eastern tree block was on the immediate need to do list. A great illustrative example of why it is important to do certain things in a timely manner when it comes to owning land.
I managed to get some spraying done
This shouldn’t be the big deal that it is but with our land being so exposed on a west facing slope I get a good spray day maybe once a month at best. This time I managed to get out five 9L tanks. Spraying would be one of my most hated jobs, yet most satisfying when completed. Over the following days I get to wander around the garden watching where I have sprayed yellow off, sound in the knowledge that those small patches of land are sorted for the coming months. The only areas I am watching with trepidation are where I was spraying in and around the hedge. It was a bit high risk but the fastest and most effective way to kill off the grass. What’s left will hopefully then be more manageabel for hand weeding.
I basically never get to spray everywhere I want to in one go, so I have learnt that I am better off concentrating on keeping the areas I sprayed last time well managed rather than leaving those until next time. Disturbance weeds come back surprisingly quickly and as is less surprising for successful disturbance weeds, they throw seed in record time. No weeds mean no seed… yay.
The front garden bed almost looks ok
This has been an ongoing project over the years and has been hand weeded more times that I care to admit. We have tried a whole range of ‘we don’t quite have enough money to do it properly the first time’ strategies such as:
- Ignoring it
- Starting at the edges and planting our way in
- Getting some trees in early
- Sowing flowers from seed for Bees
Of the strategies that we have tried it has been defining an edge with concrete curbing that has made the most difference to it feeling like it is meant to be like that. We are now managing as best we can with the small number of flower seeds that have survived, mostly Alyssum and Corn flowers by weeding around them and encouraging them to throw seed in a slow botanic hostile takeover.
Hard lessons
Next time I would bite the bullet, define the edges and get irrigation in before I started planting. Trees might be the exception to that, but this piecemeal approach has probably seen work done five times over if not more.
Small produce wins
And I emphasise the word ‘small’ here. Many people have fantasies about owning land, some semblance of self-sufficiency, and growing your own produce… and we aren’t any different. Several failed vegetable plots over the years have taught us otherwise. Usually it’s not enough time, or not enough time at just the wrong time. It sucks getting a vegetable garden many weeks or months down the line and the first time you can’t give it the attention it needs it happens to be the week that is critical for it to stay alive. But that’s not what this is about… we got a Lime.
To say that I’m desperate to be able to grow good Citrus is an understatement. We have three lemon trees, two limes, two Yuzus, a Cumquat, a Limequat, and a Pomelo. Of those two must spend the Winter indoors with me lifting the heavy pots inside and outside on a regular basis. My wife has put me on a ban from buying anymore citrus that I fully intend to break soon.
Most of the citrus we do have were bought and planted in 2018. Most have gone through cycles of sulking and surprisingly one of the best trees in the ground is a Tahitian Lime that has no business being as happy as it is with the Antarctic blasts that we get from the Southwest. By 2021 with still no fruit I was starting to grumble, and they must have heard me with each lime tree pumping out a whole one lime each. This week it was cocktail time. Having gotten the message, I can now happily say the trees are loaded for next season’s crop.
More for posterity
