Warning .... picture heavy.
 |
| March 2013 Mowing Weeds |
 |
| More Weeds |
 |
| All pretty & neat - why won't it stay this way? |
 |
| August 2013 - It was as if we hadn't done anything. |
 |
| Lots of Weeds |
 |
| More Weed Whacking |
 |
| Trying black plastic on a few beds |
 |
March 2014 - plastic helped somewhat in the beds but in
between was another story so we decided to put down
cardboard & pine bark mulch. |
 |
| Different angle |
 |
| Looks all nice & neat again. |
 |
| Wish it would stay this way. |
 |
May 2014 - better but those weeds left are deep! And,
they seem to have taken a liking to cardboard. I think
they think it's some kind of fertilizer instead of a deterrent. |
 |
| Added more cardboard & mulch to the other walkway. |
It was all helping but not controlling & since I'm not up there (yet) to be able to tackle the weeds on a regular basis we decided to spray. NOT something that I wanted to do but we've got to get the upper hand at some point. So we did what we did. We'll see if the spray helps kill it back so we can mulch thicker & on a regular basis.
We didn't spray the asparagus beds which are doing much better because I have thicker mulch & some cow poo & more leaves on them & the few weeds that spring up are manageable - no pic. I plan on putting in crowns as soon as I can get some, may be too late for them again this year but if so, I'll put them in next spring.
Regardless, the other beds aren't getting anything planted in them until next fall (2015) at the earliest, so hopefully, the bad stuff will have dissipated. I never planned on being an organic gardener to begin with but hoped to do more natural gardening. We'll see if that pans out after I am able to tend to it regularly.
Anyway, here's a few more pics of the trees & such. Not sure if I mentioned before it but we lost all 3 large oaks that we planted to some strange disease & lost the lemon & lime to freeze. So, I plucked a few oak seedlings & a bay laurel from the City property & planted those in March & so far, knock on wood, they haven't died. Plus we got a few fruit & maple trees in the ground as well.
 |
| The 'Orchard' - 2 apple & 2 peach |
 |
Lone Surviving Orange
Gets the worst wind & no wind break but
it survived the winter. The other 2 citrus
with wind breaks did not, go figure. |
 |
| Bay Laurel about 3 ft. tall, dug up from City House. |
 |
| 1 of about 8 tiny oaks seedlings from City House - about 1 ft. |
 |
| 1 of 2 purchased Maples. |
The fruit trees & Maples were purchased in early March 2013 from a Greenscape sale in the City. Prices were very good for decent sized trees ($10 - &15 each).
Last but not least, as MIL & FIL were fertilizing the crepe myrtles we planted last year (which are doing great by the way) we noticed this in one of the crepe myrtles. Anybody know what kind of snake it might be?
 |
| Snake skin in a crepe myrtle |
 |
| Close up of skin |
