Weeds

One thing that is difficult to keep on top of when the weather won’t cooperate is weeding. That’s why it is important to take every chance you get to attack them.

Our rock garden is quite, well, how should I put it… established. I mean, we have plenty of mature plants in there with some areas left intentionally bare for growth. Years later the bare spots have been overtaken by out of control carpet roses and phlox. Sometimes I think it would be a good idea to pull out a good amount of the phlox, mostly the tall variety as the groundcover species isn’t as intrusive, and maybe the yellow carpet rose too, but at the same time having these well established plants keeps the weeds to a minimum, right? Or so one would think.

Those bare spots, even the little crevices between the plants are breeding grounds for all sorts of weeds. Some of these weeds are easy to pull, especially since there has been so much rain causing the ground to be soggy rather than brick-like. And then there is the grass growing throughout the sedums and succulents, which is nearly impossible to pull without taking a good chunk of the surrounding plant with it. For this there are two options: Pull the grass and be okay with your losses; spray the grass with a specific grass killer. I’ve tried both, and while they both yield okay results, pulling it seems to be the better option for me. You see, succulents in the summer grow quickly and any bare areas will be filled in within a couple weeks if they aren’t too large, whereas spraying the grass will definitely kill it, but leaves dead grass which doesn’t decay as quickly as one would hope. Also dead grass seems to be harder to pull up than live grass, at least to get the roots too.

So last night before it got dark I put on a pair of gloves and decided to pull all the big stuff out of the rock garden. At least if the larger weeds were pulled it wouldn’t look so horrific, and the lawn debris service was coming in the morning so I wanted to fill the cart. After I was finished with that I was able to gauge the situation better, and unfortunately the situation was only slightly improved. All I could see was the ground-hugging weeds covering the beautiful river rock and pea gravel. And from the blue sky I see while typing this post, I believe I’ll be out there on my hands and knees with my weeder this morning trying to clean it up for the summer. Wish me luck.