I’m SO behind on my weeding this year, more so than ever before. I just couldn’t motivate to put down mulch in May, and I’m paying for it now. The weeds in some areas are taller than me, and it’s taking way more effort to get them out than it would’ve if I’d gotten them young, so there’s a lot of silent cursing involved.
I’ve gotten Anand to help some — at age 13, he can only do about 15 minutes of gardening at a time before he gets hot and cranky, so I basically have him come out at the top of the hour, do stuff for 15 minutes, and then take a 45 minute break. I can usually get at least 3-4 stints of that out of him if I pace it carefully and make sure he’s not trying to work in the sunny areas.
It’s been hard to motivate to weed, especially as it gets hot, so yesterday, I bribed myself — I stopped by Empowering Gardens and got a few more plants for the hot bed I’m developing, and that helped motivate me to actually weed the bed, so I could plant the new plants.
I added yellow crocosmia, red callas, and pink dianthus to the coneflowers, butterfly weed, and lilies that were already there. The callas aren’t hardy in our zone, so I’ll have to remember to dig them up after the first frost if I want to overwinter and plan them next year. They should get bigger and I might be able to divide them in a year or two, if I keep doing that.
The crocosmia are marginally hardy — they’re zones 6-9 and we’re zone 6a; I’m going to try leaving them there and see if it’s a sheltered enough spot for them to survive. I’m pretty sure the dianthus is a hardy perennial variety (some dianthus are annuals, so check if you want the perennial), so should come back just fine.
Very satisfying — now I just need to get up the energy to actually mulch in between the plants (I use milled hardwood mulch that will break down and improve the clay soil), so I’m not weeding the whole area again in two weeks…
