Family, gardening, home, Nature, Uncategorized

Weeds

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Husband and I returned home last Tuesday from Brookings to a garden jungle of weeds. It rained every day we were gone, and the temperatures were quite warm, so everything grew. We weeded on Wednesday.  Husband estimated we  hauled about 50 pounds of weeds to the city  grass clippings and weeds dumpsters,

I have never seen the utility of using a hoe to weed. It just cuts the weeds off at the top, and leaves the roots to produce the weeds again. We are hands and knees, crawl through the garden and pull the weeds up by the roots sort of gardeners. We are, however, getting older and Husband has neuropathy in his fingers from diabetes.

This year we tried a new strategy, laying down newspapers between the rows  and on the edges of the beds and covering them with a layer of top soil. That really helped  keep the weeds down. Husband has bought at least 30 bags of topsoil toward this endeavor, and after weeding yesterday he liberally strewed newspaper and dirt in all the places he hadn’t before.  It was a real pleasure to gaze at the garden yesterday and see nary a weed.

What is your favorite garden tool?  What special satisfaction do you get from gardening?

22 thoughts on “Weeds”

  1. We are waiting for the delivery of a chain saw. It is a non motorized chain saw, one with a length of chain saw teeth with long ropes attached at either end. You throw the rope and chain over a branch, and then hold the rope ends and pull them back and forth. Our neighbor has a very badly maintained ash tree and the branches hang over our yard. One branch came down on our roof this week. The neighbor took care of it, at least. We can’t find a tree trimmer to come and take care of the other branches threatening our roof, so we are hopeful that the chain saw rope thingy will work. I hope it becomes our favorite gardening tool.

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  2. I still have a Fiskars mini-snipper-clipper-thingy that they no longer seem to be selling – lightweight plastic (mine is orange, my sister’s was blue), and it was designed to hold the flower/weed you had just clipped till you got it to its destination. Was so handy and practical – just found mine and will see if I can sharpen it.

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  3. RIse and Shine, Baboons,

    Renee, you have my sympathy regarding the weeds last week. I spent two days weeding before we left to visit my mother. Gardening tools bring out the persnickety part of me. I want just the right ones and just so.

    1. Plant ties: I like the rubber covered wire ones and the Velcro ties. They don’t cut the plant stems and they stay in place.
    2. Weed wacker. Our present one does not demand constant re-charging nor constant lengthening of the “wacker” cord.
    3. Of course, I only like the expensive ones. Washable. With Velcro fastener, knit fabric so they stay tight.
    4. Almost anything will do as a stake, but I like the bamboo ones the best. And the ties stay put on the bamboo stakes.
    5. Tool bucket with tool holder: This is the 5 gallon bucket the the cloth insert/cover that holds the tools in pockets and the black plastic cover that I can sit on as needed.

    I do use a hoe. You are right, Renee, about cutting off the roots, but sometimes when weeding by hand, the roots break off and I must use the hoe to remove the roots.

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    1. My friend at work got me a little sign that says, “AS LONG AS EVERYTHING IS JUST LIKE I WANT IT, I AM COMLETELY FLEXIBLE.” Perhaps that means my persnickety streak shows up there, too?

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  4. Because we have a city-size small lot heavily planted with bushes and perennials and only a few raised beds for vegetables and herbs, we don’t do a lot of hoeing. Robin has a small triangular-headed hoe she uses for some close work and we otherwise hand pull weeds.

    With all the bushes and small trees, probably the tools we use most often are the pruning implements. We have several pairs of spring-loaded gardening scissors for light work, Felco shears for heavier close work, long handled Fiskar loppers for bigger branches, swede saws for limbs, a pole saw for overhead limbs and a hedge trimmer for more general shaping. Those probably get the most use of anything in our garden, at least in terms of maintenance.

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    1. i sold corona clippers for a bunch of years and they had the exclusive selling rights of felco tools which were the finest in the world. fiscars is a good brand, corona a great one felco the best one

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  5. Morning.
    My sister in PA lost a big tree yesterday in a Thunderstorm. Didn’t hurt anything major; smashed a few planters. It was a nice tree though.
    And then I lost tree yesterday, too. Some good wind about 10:30 AM. Just a box elder. Didn’t hurt anything either although I moved a tractor just a few days ago and it would have been on top of that. Whew.

    My family had a discussion about hoes one day. I collected about 6 I have out in the shed. Flat heads, triangle heads, rounded corners and sharp corners. Broken handles, taped handles, worn handles.
    A hoe is handy when weeds are small, because you can dig out the roots.
    In some row crops, it’s OK to cut it off if the crop is going to canopy soon enough the weed won’t get enough light to grow back.

    I think maybe the adjustable sprinkler and timer are my favorite gardening tools.

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  7. My favorite gardening tool used to be a Felco #2 hand pruner. It was a pricey little tool, and I was careful to always bring it inside and clean it off after each use. When you pay fifty bucks for a small hand tool, it behooves you to not let lie around in the wet grass or on the ground. I made the mistake of letting the man who I had hired to help with various gardening chores use it to trim some shrubs. After three hours of work, he was unable to locate where he had put it down. This was several years ago, and I still have not found it. This same man, also saw fit to eradicate every single one of my seven different thyme plants that I had carefully nurtured over several years. His response to both incidents? Just a shrug. His attitude clearly was, “shit happens.” I no longer use his services. I haven’t been able to find a replacement for him, though I have bought myself a new, less expensive Fiskars soft grip pruner.

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    1. The one thing I don’t like about the Felco is that the spring that opens the blades can come loose and get lost and when that happens they are a good deal less handy.

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        2. I really don’t think so, Jacque. He’s just not a very focused person. His private life very much reflected this reality, as well. The kind of person that constantly has “bad luck” without it ever occurring to him that his own behaviors, and not paying attention, may be contributing to his misfortunes.

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  8. I have a small clipper that I use for things that I can’t pull out. I don’t know what brand it is; I’ve had it many years and in fact I’ve had it sharpened twice. I probably paid more to have it sharpened those two times than it initially cost. But I love it. I’m actually doing a lot of weeding the summer. Pretty much every day. I’m feeling like I’m actually making Creeping Charlie headway. I probably shouldn’t say that out loud.

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    1. I have one of those—sort of. It’s not as sharp as the one described in the article, certainly not sharp enough to use as a machete. I question how long it would stay sharp after digging in the dirt. I never found it that useful, but maybe that’s just a difference in gardening style.

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  11. i miss gardening. my favorite tool was a serrated knife to saw my hostas into segments when splitting them and spreading the wealth. i had a stainless steel gardeners shovel and fork for digging them out. corona tools and felco pruners, i have some interesting plant ties that i should ask you all to try for me. ive had them for years and am putting them on amazon this week. their clain to fame is that they fasten to the stake and also to the plant with a second zip tie that is reusable. they are cool too

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  12. My favorite tool is the weed wrench BiR mentioned. I have buckthorn and a lot of maple and siberian elm seedlings, plus the occasional mulberry and boxelder. and it’s invaluable for getting those out of the ground with the entire root. The only thing it doesn’t remove very well is an oak sapling. Oak has really strong roots, so the stem tends to break

    A good cordless hedge trimmer is a nice thing to have, but you always like to have a corded electric standing by in case the cordless isn’t charged.

    Plus a ratchet pruner. And a good sharp lopper.

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