Subtracting

Pretty much, it feels like almost all the gardening done this year is subtracting.  I've been weeding all year, pruning, and plan to cut down several bushes and do more pruning when the leaves are down.

My back yard - inside the fence - was a mess. Last year, the neighbor removed all of the mock orange bush I liked, and most of the associated weeds I didn't like. The mock orange was thoroughly interlocked with Japanese honeysuckle and I believe taking the whole thing all the way out may have been the only way to cope.  In the disturbed soil, at the front end,  There are bits and pieces of english ivy, coming in from the slope below. I now have bindweed moving in from outside the fence. At the back end, it was pokeweed city, and I went after it properly a few weeks ago, covered up against the irritating sap and digging out by the roots all the tall plants that were just setting fruit.  I also have virginia copperleaf, plaintains of various shapes and sizes, some asiatic dayflower and one plant I haven't identified for sure - maybe a mallow (Abutilon)? It has its dull flowers in the axils. It doesn't seem to be in my main weed book, at least on a cursory new look today.  See this website for more details:  Least Wanted: Plant Invaders.

My current crusade is to try to get these things before they set seed too much. I'm not focused on the english ivy for that reason.  The really big issue is the grass.  I hand-pulled a couple of weeks ago, and then yesterday, bunches of the spreading grass that may be the annual stiltgrass but is more probably the perennial bermuda grass, or maybe something else entirely.  It makes a difference on treatment, because with bermuda grass you have to get the roots and with stiltgrass you have to get the seeds.  I did get many of the seeds, and few of the roots. My thinking is to rake up the soil underneath, and seed with bluegrass and other mixed lawn seeds.

A lot of my weed control is based on tilting the scales so what I want can compete effectively with the weeds, rather than focusing on totally eradicating the weeds.  That is what I started to do this spring, when I seeded throughout the back yard late, but not too late.  It sprouted and I was hopeful.  However, it was dry at the wrong time and the bad grass grew up and over what I had planted. My thinking on the handpulling is if the good grass is down under there, this gives it a chance to recover.  Raking with stiff tines to rough up the dirt, and seeding again, might work - especially if I follow up by actually watering afterwards.  The point is, this is repetitive work and not a one-time job.  If I can achieve enough balance of the scales that I don't have intervene all the time, I'll be happy.

Outside the fence in the back, I think I have both kinds of bindweed - field and hedge. They are perennials, though one has shallow and the other deep roots.  There is no way to kill them except chemically.  I have just been ripping them out, but inconsistently, and they continue to spread.  It would take a major and persistent campaign to make them go away, and I'm not sure I'm up to it it this year.  But I will pull it back.

I have been trying to solarize the back bed. I put plastic down on it sometime in the past (the memory goes and I didn't blog it) but now the plastic has rips in it which totally destroys the purpose.  I need to pull the weeds circling it, and then replace the plastic.  I don't have a plan of what to plant there before spring, so I think I need to re-plastic it.

I'd like to check the rainfall records - I think we've been wet enough except for a period in June/July.

I have big plans for cutting and pruning.  It's all about subtracting right now, now adding.