September 13, 2018
September has not been much better for gardening than the rest of the year. It's so embarrassing to look at how great the year started and how unruly the garden has become over the Summer. I have managed to keep the outside of the garden looking relatively under control but even that has suffered this year. I was glad to see the knock off rose bush survived the harsh Winter. It suffered during this year but perhaps next year it will be back to it's beautiful self. I'm hoping to be able to propagate some more rose bushes to plant around the garden area. I'm also hoping to spend more time at Terra Nova Gardens in September reclaiming the garden.
This is the ugly mess that the garden has turned out to be this year. The bones are still under there but the grass and weeds have taken over the land again. It doesn't take long for nature to reclaim the land when unattended.
After an hour or so I completed a trim of the grass and covered the area with a tarp. I'm hoping this will keep the weeds at bay better than the carpet. This is a 12'X20' tarp for $20 at Walmart. When I get the next section cleared I'll buy another tarp to cover it. It will take five tarps and some smaller ones to cover the entire area. It would be nice to get it all covered before Winter but I think that's probably not going to happen.
Slowly but surely the reclamation is at work. I'm almost starting over with the garden. I've come to the conclusion that the garden is too much to handle at this time in my life. Other things always seem to get in the way of garden time. By the end of the my energy is spent and I'm not in the mood to spend a couple hours in the garden. Next year my garden at Terra Nova Gardens will be half the size with only every other bed in production. The other beds will be in a rejuvenation process. Then the next year it will switch with the ones that have been rejuvenated this year will be in production and the beds that have grown vegetables next year will be rejuvenated and so it will go into the future years. It will a total new concept.
September 26, 2018
The month is ending soon. I have been making some headway at Terra Nova Gardens.
This I believe is bed #9 before I started cleaning it up. The process was to weed whack the weeds down to the ground. Then rake the debris off the path and bed. Then do a general soil turn over. No deep trench compost preparation just yet. The reclamation process continues as long as I can until the ground is frozen.
This is the result of about two hours of work. The bed is now exposed. I that that the best answer for weed control is to cover the ground with carpet but turns out the dust settles on the carpet, weed seeds sprout in the dust, and roots grow down through the carpet. If the carpet is turned over occasionally, then the method works but if not weeds grow as if they are in the soil without the carpet barrier. My next thought was to cover the beds with tarps but that will block the rain from soaking into the soil over the Winter. So I'm taking the tarps off for now and leaving the soil exposed for Winter moisture to soak into the soil. Perhaps in the Spring I'll cover the beds again to keep weeds under control until I'm ready to prepare and plant the bed.
The potatoes that were planted oh so long ago and neglected all summer long have matured. The potato bed had weeds just like bed #9 before cleaning off the debris. Now the harvesting of the potatoes can begin. I'll be keep them in the ground as long as I can. Storage in the store room is not the best for potatoes. So I need to keep them fresh in the soil until the soil started to freeze. Hopefully, that won't be for another month.
