heat

Weather continues in the 80s, and with it the mugginess in the air, and the potential of what our local weather chatterer calls pop-up thunderstorms.

I have a several plants under a tree ready to plant, and I gave them a good watering this morning. Yes, we may get rain. No, we may not. Best not to take a chance. They were getting dry.

There's an opportunity to work in the garden in early afternoon. Maybe I can get a few more bags of composted manure.

I let much of the weeding go undone so far this year. Part of this is because I was under pressure to transplant established plants and dig up new beds while the air was cool and the ground was soft and part of it was because of the seeds I had put out. I didn't want to disturb the soil. Seedlings are up and I have gotten a bit of yard violet epidemic, some excess aster seedlings, and a couple of other nuisance weeds.

I've begun weed control, alternating between spending 20-30 minutes with trowel in hand, digging out and cleaning sections at a time, or doing sweeps through the garden pulling what can easily be pulled out by hand, including maple and other volunteer starts that pop up. Between the two approaches, I should have the weeds under control soon.

My goal will be to get it reasonably clean, then I can periodically come through with the hoe and chop out new weeds. It is important to get deep rooted weeds out by hand. Just pulling the tops off only encourages the roots to dig in and defy my attempts to be in charge of the garden. Good weeding now will make for casual, relaxed weeding later in the year, when I am walking through the garden, inspecting plants, musing on whether they are doing well or not, deciding on some new plant or arrangement of plantings.