garden life

Spent some time today in the fruit bed weeding.  Found lots of oxalis.  It's a pretty little weed with its dusky purple cast -- but I have been told it is a dangerous one -- to dig out the entire root or this little guy will multiply fast.  And I am being diligent about it since in another corner of my yard clover and vetch has overrun the existing periwinkle and is threating my nandina too.

In more upbeat garden news -- while weeding the fruit bed my son found 4 apples growing on our columnar tree.  This is the first time it has born fruit (it was planted 2 years ago.)

His discovery took me by total surprise.  I heard that stocking covers help prevent apple maggots infestation (which we are prone to in this area.)  I think we were supposed to get the covers on before the fruit reached nickel size and now I have quarters.  Plus I was caught unprepared since we have never had fruit before.  I bought nylons at the foodstore tonight so I can cover up my beauties tomorrow. 

Another surprise in my apple tree was the spiraled dweller below.  With my snail lover nearby, I had to quietly palm him and quickly launch him over the fence into the street.  I didn't go check on his landing...  I can be mean when there are edibles involved.

I also spent some time just enjoying the aesthetics of an abundant garden.  I am so glad I started planting months ago.

AM project: removing tyfon cover crop

It was a busy day at Scaredy Cat farm.  This morning I laid down a soaker hose for my fruit bed then started the transformation of my  "weed bed."  The first task was to remove all the tyfon cover crop I planted there last fall.  Previously the bed had been covered with landscape fabric and beauty bark.  I picked tyfon as my renovation crop because it has long tap roots to break up soil and it is edible (though I wasn't brave enough to try more than a few leaves.  The bottoms are supposed to be like turnips but something seemed to have gotten to mine first -- see this January post.)

There was a lot of work to do so I enlisted all the help I could get. 

And while this looks like lots of work, it wasn't.  What started as an Indiana Jones adventure morphed into the German Army, into being farmers, into a fourth of July celebration, into pirates. (Tyfon is that easy to pull.)

The kids and their neighborhood friends did a great job.  As you can see, they razed the lot before losing interest.

Which left me with just the devastation to deal with. Unfortunately, despite the tyfon I still had a thick mat of weeds.  I started to remove them -- first individually to make sure the really bad weeds were dealt with appropriately, then with a hoe to mow down all the annuals. 

I still have work ahead of me (more hoeing and covering the area with compost), but with any luck this bed will get seeded for wildflowers as a draw for beneficial insects tomorrow.