Re-claiming the flower garden

Sigh! I'm pretty sure it's one of the ugliest sites for a gardener... to see a flower bed directly after the snow thaws... especially if you never got it cleaned out in the fall! Just dead plants, likely some garbage blown in... and then a few weeks later, despite the deadness of everything else, the plethora of weeds that seem to just KNOW where they are not wanted! They start popping up right along with those blessed perennials.
 

You might remember this photo from my "at war with the dog" post! But now you can admire all the glory of my post-winter flower bed. :( dead plants still lingering, brown grass all around, and yet thick lush green grass and dandelions in the flower bed! fluff from various stuffies of Kaiser's (our dog), random garbage that gets caught up in there... and my milk jugs of course! (update on those yet to come!)

SO what do you do!? If your adhd is as bad as mine, your first thought is to toss some grass seed on it and just give up, and stick some pots on the ground instead! But no... as I am slowly learning in life, taking steps, however small, still moves you forward. So I took steps!

1) RAKE IT OUT!! Yup. that'll get rid of most of the junk. Break off dead stems. They've already separated from parenneals, so they wont dammage any roots. And then Just have-at'er with a leaf rake.

See? Much better! All the dead plants from last year are no longer around, the fuzzies and garbage also gone.  In fact, it looks like a nicer lawn then our ACTUAL lawn does... sigh! Problem number 2! Perennial grasses! Ever heard of the expression "grassroots organization"? This expression only makes sense after trying to remove the root system of a grass plant from a garden bed. It's next to impossible... seriousely... and even if you get it all, there's always one tap-root you don't get, and that's enough to bring the whole plant back... great for the lawn, not so great for a garden...

So, as any good all-natural organic gardener would do... I turned to Round-up...

lol yup! I'm really not all that naturalistic... I mean, I am when I can! But sometimes it's just not in the cards! And when that's the case, I just sigh a sigh of relief that someone has invented something I can use! Throw on some gloves, long pants, and wait for a non-windy day. Lets remember that this isn't a food garden... So round-up matters a lot less here. Plus it doesn't touch the plants I am keeping, and Round-up neutralizes when it hits the soil. So it wont kill any future plants, only the plants it touches!  After that, it's harmless. So long as you understand what you're working with, and are careful, it's all good! :)
 

 So I set to work, and sprayed round-up all over! The trick is to cover up any perenneals that have sprouted, using ice cream pails and boxes (things you can throw away afterwards because they'll get round-up on them). If you don't have any perennials in there... HECK JUST RE-TILL THE BED! you don't need this post! ;)

Anyway, this photo was taken probably a week after the round-up was applied. (important: after round-up is applied, check daily that your dandelions arent seeding!! Dead-head those suckers if they turn white!!) You can see it was very effective on the grasses, my perennials are just dandy, and the dandelions have lightened in color but still are thriving. At this point, I again covered my Perennials, and went in with round-up a second time.

The beauty of round up is that it kills the root systems themselves if you can spray all the leaves of a plant. I usually also spritz a bit of the surrounding grass at the edges of the flower bed, since there's a very good chance the root systems are connected. It's never affected my lawn, since grass is an incredibly vigorous plant... for better and worse haha!

so several days after round two of the Round-up, you can see the rest of the weeds are suffering, and the grasses are just flat-out done... :) hazzah! On to phase 3 of my evil plan!!

 this... right here... is my secret weapon! It's a hand-tiller y'alls! you just plunge it into the soil and twist. The beauty of this tool is that it's easier than a shovel, and you can work in small areas (AKA around your perennials) without dammaging other plants! :) Yay!

This dirt was also remarkably easy to till simply because of how dry it was. I didn't even attempt to pull the weeds first. I tilled first. Loosening the soil, means that I'll be able to pull out the entire root of a plant as opposed to just the leaves.

 you can see the difference above and below, what a nice little till does to the flower bed, and to the weeds.

after about two hours of working the soil, I managed to get it all tilled up!

Next came the hard part. Weeding it all! Goodness I detest grass roots... so pesky! And just everywhere. Tilling enabled me to get into the dirt up to my elbows and really dig for roots! There's no sense pulling leaves off of weeds. It's the root you need to get rid of!

Not bad eh? Now you can tell where my Perennials are!  I have two sedums, one on each end, two hostas (the little green spits that look like a weed popping up), in the centre is something like a black-eyed susan, and then in front-centre is my white strawberries from last year, which I was told were an annual lol!

Next comes watering. Because no matter how careful you are, you're going to disturb a few roots of the perennials simply from tilling close enough to eliminate weeds. So for their trauma an extra drink.

First though, while the soil is maliable, I created a big crop circle around each plant. A ridged mote of sorts to contain water. This flower bed is not totally level. Water ends up puddling in weird spots. So while I had the time, I simply created my own water-puddling zones, directly surrounding my perennials.

You can see how this encourages the water to remain directly at the roots of the perennial. :)

And there you have it! we went from this:

To this:

 To this!:

A beautiful flower bed, primed and ready for bedding plants, bulbs, seeds, what-have-you! :) Now to do the side garden.... ;)