August Garden Tour (2023)
I have dedicated my life to getting rid of the equisetum in my yard! I’m not joking. I. will. win! But let’s back it up a bit.
When we moved into this house several years ago, the garden area was so overgrown with weeds. It was bad. We weed-wacked it all down. I tried my best to dig up as much of the weeds as I could.
I decided I was going to sheet mulch the entire area and suppress as much of the weeds as I could. I spent the next winter collecting cardboard. I kid you not, the equisetum grew straight through the cardboard.
These little guys run off a mother root that is buried deep into the depths of the soil. If you pull it out, it will snap off the main root and grow another one.
So I have committed my life, while I am still willing and able, to dig up as much of it as I can and disrupt enough of the main root system that it will just die on its own. When I am fifty I will enjoy the fruits of my labor with a weed free backyard. That’s the dream.
Here’s how it’s going to go down.
This tiered bed has become my orphan garden bed. Any plants that do not have a permanent home go here. I tend to move plants around a lot. When I don’t like where I placed them but I am not sure where else to put it, the plant goes in this bed.
The future of this bed will be a potential moon garden? I’m not sure. I change my mind every time I look at it.
These beds came with the house. I am planning on moving the strawberries from the back bed to the front bed on the right. I need to figure out how to keep the squirrels from eating them though. The bed in the front to the left will be a lettuce bed with romaine and butter lettuce. I am planning to do a square foot garden in the lettuce bed. We also have two rhubarb plants. I am going to dig out that random green stake and put the smaller rhubarb there. The chives will also be removed and placed into the ground next to the rhubarb.
Next year I plan to grow roman chamomile, cilantro, thyme, and lavender. These plants will go in the ground next to the rhubarb and chives.
The larger beds in the middle will be cut flower beds. My daughter wants to grow her own flowers so hers will be the one that needs to be weeded.
The thin, rectangle bed in the back under the tree will be taken down next year. The wood has rotted and the boards are falling apart.
The bed with the lattice will be my hosta bed. I think I am going to bring the hostas from the front yard and put them back here.
There was another garden bed where the chickweed is growing. It was rotted and falling apart. I knew this was coming though. But it’s a guilty pleasure of mine to dig up chickweed. It pulls out of the ground in massive chunks pretty easily. And then I’m like, “MUAH-HA-HA I’ve got you! DON’T COME BACK!” (throws into black trash bag) Like the Elsa’s ice man guard from Frozen.
And here we are again. I can’t even look at this. I mean… c’mon. Do you see how many trash bags there are? All full of weeds. I spend my life weeding. I can’t anymore. There is an easement behind our fence and that’s how the weeds get in. They weasel their way under the fence and ruin my life.
I am hoping to plant some bottle rockets and foxgloves and anything tall and shady that will block out the weeds.
We had a second raspberry patch by these stakes that were on the struggle bus. They were planted right under a tree. Not sure why. They didn’t get much sun. The berries were always so tiny. I dug them up and need to dig up the stakes.
This whole area was taken over by equisetum. It was a field of equisetum. I spent several days digging them out, trying to annihilate the little beasts. Am I wasting my time?
I am hoping to get more bottle rockets and hostas and foxgloves, perhaps a hydrangea, and filling this space with so many flowers the weeds will have no choice but to die.
I can’t keep on like this—spending my entire summer days, in my backyard, digging up the weeds, with over twenty plus trash bags of yard waste. There has to be a better way.
I tried breaking the yard into zones and weeding a zone a day. I can’t do it consistently because I also like to do other things with my life.
So this will be phase one of weed annihilation slash beginning of a potager garden.
xo L.
