Wiregrass Battle.....Day 3

Progress is being made. I may even live through it.

The black plastic is down (hopefully staying in place). Now the sun gets to bake the wiregrass.

Well, except for the next 6 days, all of which are suppose to be rainy.

Just so you believe me about the blueberries, this is one of the babies surrounded by the blanket of pine straw. It already has green leaves and buds, and stands about 12" tall. Since it's a 3-year-old plant, it *might* have one or two blueberries this summer.

While it rains this week, I'll be planning my garden. I'm wavering between an intense square-foot-garden layout, versus the straw bales, or a bit of both. This is the week to start seedlings of lettuce, broccoli, spinach, onion, rosemary, oregano, and thyme. The warmer weather plants like potato, tomato, pepper, and basil can be started in the greenhouse, in order to be ready in 6-8 weeks when it's warm enough here in Virginia to set them out.

Later this week, we'll discuss garden notebooks and why you really, really want to keep one.

Wiregrass Battle.....Day One

First we had to pull up all the rocks and bricks, and then the carpet paths the rocks were anchoring.

Almost all the carpet had to be tossed -the wiregrass had literally woven itself into the carpet fibers. A few pieces were salvaged.

Then the drip hose was pulled up - found out a 10 foot section had hardened to the point of being brittle. Also removed and stacked the plastic racks that the gourds grow on (have I mentioned I found new gourd seeds a couple days ago: snake gourds, swan gourds, apple gourds and....nest egg gourds).

Lastly, before roto-tilling, we dug and temporarily potted the blueberry bushes. Discovered the wiregrass had grown into the roots and bound them. No wonder my poor babies didn't grow much last year.

Then we raked up all the loose mulch and straw, piling it up to be removed with the bad carpet.

And then - roto-tilling. This is the final result:

There's one strip left of wiregrass on the lefthand side - we'll get it tomorrow.

All of this tilled dirt has to be gone over with a rake, clump by clump, so we can remove the wiregrass runners.

Have I mentioned that wirefrass is The Devil?

Plan B is a flamethrower.

Planning Stages

This is from last year - as I type there is 4" of snow in this very location. But it's early March which means I need to be getting seeds planted in the flats out in the greenhouse and start planning this year's garden.

Here's my biggest problem this year:

Wiregrass.

Wiregrass is the Devil. It is an evil, evil plant sent directly from hell.

And it's all over my yard and all in my garden. The straw you see above was an attempt to smother the wiregrass. The carpet you see was an attempt to smother the wiregrass.

Nothing kills it. I even tried spraying it with the equally-evil chemical roundup, and *guess what* wiregrass luuves roundup. It sucks up glasses of it for breakfast and then turns to me and says "More please ma'm."

This year's game plan is to pull up the fencing, and the buried drip hoses, roto-till the garden, rake out as much of the torn up wiregrass roots as possible, and then cover the entire garden in black plastic for the summer, and steambake the soil. This will cancel out all the good from my lasagna garden layers, and kill off some good soil bacteria -BUT- it might also kill the wiregrass.

If it doesn't, there's always the flamethrower.