Flobadob, little weed!
13/09/2007
Having a garden isn’t all about planting beautiful flowers and watching them bloom, says MT’s Gardening Guru Carole Davies. Sometimes you have to pay your dues and get amongst the weeds.
It’s Bank Holiday Monday and ’im indoors – whose idea of attractive greenery is the pitch at Anfield - suggests a drive in the countryside.
Lured by the promise of a cream tea to follow I get into the car – quickly. Delicious Somerset countryside unfolded beneath our wheels as we rolled past picturesque villages and picture-postcard views of lakes and hills towards an equally delicious Somerset Cream tea (which differs from a Devon cream tea only by geography) at Banwell Castle.
As luck would have it, right next to the castle is a garden centre that was sporting the best view of the day. It was a sign. Literally. And on it was written: ‘All plants half price’. Well, my garden has plants enough but taking it as a sign from above (the sign was at least a foot taller than me) I dragged ’im indoors through the garden centre gates and proceeded to load him up with perennials.
Back home again I excitedly donned my gardening shoes and announced that I was going outside with the intention of planting out my purchases. I had already had a spot in mind for the plants but it needed to be weeded first and started to dig up the particularly invasive creeping buttercup, which (although it sounds pretty, and admittedly looks wonderful in a meadow) does not have quite the same effect in a supposedly cultivated garden.
Creeping buttercup somehow manages to grow through the centre of favourite plants leaving gardeners with no option but to dig up the plant to remove the weed’s roots, and having to replant and nurture the plant for a few weeks to ensure it survives the upheaval.
Let’s face it there is no easy way to deal with weeds. When they appear in a cultivated area spraying is no good because everything will be killed along with the weeds. There is no option but to get in among the borders and physically remove the weeds. Unplanted areas are easier to deal with – if you’ve got the stamina.
The organic thing to do is to dig the ground over, remove any obvious weeds roots and then leave the ground for a few days before hoeing or digging it over again. If you pick a time when the period between digs is relatively dry any remaining roots will shrivel and the weed seeds will be dislodged and prevented from germinating. When you have repeated this process for as long as you are prepared to, spread newspaper over the ground and peg down some weed suppressant fabric (available at any decent garden centre or DIY store) over the paper.
To plant, cut a cross in the fabric and through the newspaper, pull the corners back and dig a hole large enough for the plant. Once the plant is in place pull the weed suppressant back around the base of the plant and water it well. Cover the whole area with organic mulch, such as bark or compost. The process eliminates sunlight available to any remaining weeds and the mulch will break down helping to improve the soil. Double bubble!
But I digress, the patch that I had selected for my Bank Holiday acquisitions was slap-dab in the middle of an overcrowded border so there I was, sleeves rolled in among the hostas and anenomes up tearing up the offending weeds. You know, gardening does funny things to the time-space continuum. It was nearly dark when I noticed that I was thirty feet away from where I started – with two sacks full of weeds and not a single new flower or shrub planted!
Ah well, there’s always tomorrow.