Growing Appetite

by Author

Boe

Brenda

Les

Valria

Today was a lovely day in the garden. I went out with the intent of cutting back and staking the raspberries. Not soon after I got out there I got sidetracked by the first signs of the Japanese Knot-weed(must be said with evil voice) that is the bane of my existence every year. I really need to think up a clever name to call it so you will know what I’m fighting all year long. I am sure there will be more less pleasant references throughout the season.

This is a plant, or as the master gardener at Swanson’s a couple years ago said was a noxious weed, that invades my yard and garden. Well its not on the noxious weed list that I could find for 2007. It can be eradicated if you are diligent and cut it back and starve the roots. Well Its not in my yard, I can’t cut it back. All I can do is dig it up when I see it and dig deep!!! Follow the very woody roots until I get them all (ha ha ha) or they break off. The Roots are very woody, almost branch like, and the tiniest piece or even a few fibers of a shredded one will sprout new growth.

It first starts to show in April, and I love digging it up right now because there is very little planted to disturb. Its in the middle of summer when there are stalks of it growing amongst the beans and are 3 and 4 feet tall, all I can do then is get as much as possible. It is a never ending battle, one I will forge again this year.

But I did say this was a lovely day didn’t I….. I got the raspberries cut back and the re-bar stakes in the ground. I didn’t get enough for a trellis and after pounding them in they were no where as tall as I wanted them to be…… rethinking the trellis thing. But in the mean time, I took a flexible wire dog tie out (It was in the camping stuff). It has snappy clips on either end so I looped it over and clipped the wire simply to make a loop on either end and wound it around the re-bar. For now it will hold the raspberries up and will be easy to remove to work the bed or when I finally figure something else out. I moved on down to the blueberries and pulled all the morning glory coming up, and then right on down to the strawberries. I only had enough compost to dress the raspberries and half the blueberries but that end of the garden looks great.

I got lots of kamikaze weeding done also but nothing else planted today. I hopefully will get more in soon. I am going to go through the seeds in the next couple days and get a plan going.

Here are a couple picks of the bed at the end of the day.