4th Fence garden – phlox, my husband’s favorite
On Thursday I started work on the finishing touches for the New Herb garden. I got out there at 5:30AM just after sun-up. It was cool and foggy and I was able to get the whole perimeter cleaned out before the sun came out.
It was to hit 90F and I wanted to get as much done as I could. Once the perimeter was done, I started cleaning up the walkways. Some of the beds’ mulch had been put down on the walkways, and there was a lot of spilled hay on them.
Another problem was too much mulch had been put down on the walkways last year. I’d had to rake large amounts out of the beds before I could plant. This left mountains of it down the walkways. So I set about re-doing the hay mulch so it was inside the beds, raking the loose hay mulch off the walkways, and then leveling them. I got the first one done before I got too hot.
I had a lot of mixed mulch, wood chips and hay, I’d raked up. The little sugar maple had never been mulched, so I pulled its cage off, weeded and found 2 sugar pod peas growing in there, and reinstalled the drip hose and cage.
This area is a major trap for dead leaves. While I was doing the above my helper friend was here and he had done all the foliar and milk feeding. Then he started removing leaves from here. If left, they would sprout all kinds of things.
My son was here and he finally made a start on the front pasture fence line. The wood for heat (that he was supposed to do) was far too wet to be handled so he chose this job. He made it down to the plant that’s way out in the pasture. That one defeated his weedwacker. They will have to take the powered pole saw to it.
In the process of finding the first walkway in the New Herb garden, I had to hack off an enormous pile of tansy. So Thursday afternoon was spent loading the dehydrators with it. It filled 1⅔ dehydrators.
Friday storms are to come through sometime after 10AM, and I plan to be out there early to try to get another walkway cleaned up.