{"id":3462,"date":"2021-08-02T06:36:24","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T14:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3462"},"modified":"2021-08-02T06:36:24","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T14:36:24","slug":"summer-chores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/summer-chores\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Chores"},"content":{"rendered":"

My great-Aunt Adeline, known as \u201cQueenie\u201d to the family, was a small woman who carried a big broom.\u00a0 She swept the front sidewalk every morning, even if there was not a single ant, grass blade or maple samara to be seen.\u00a0 When she and my grandmother \u201cturned out the corners\u201d of the house for seasonal cleaning, even the dust motes were afraid.<\/p>\n

I think of this when I contemplate the summer clean-up chores in my garden. \u00a0I wish I could resurrect Aunt Queenie to help get the project under control.<\/p>\n

People generally undertake garden clean-up in spring and fall, but I find that summer has its own brand of untidiness.\u00a0 In hot weather, the plants need us, their handlers, enablers and occasional tormenters, even more than in more temperate seasons.\u00a0 That is why summer clean-up a necessity.<\/p>\n

My plant holding area is a big mess.\u00a0 In spring I buy most of my new plants, because waiting until early summer means that the selection is limited, even if the bargains are plentiful.\u00a0 The problems start when I can\u2019t plant all of my purchases right after I buy them.\u00a0 They end up in into the holding area\u2014or more properly, \u201careas\u201d, since I have one on my driveway and one on the back porch.\u00a0 The holding area is convenient, but it should not continue to harbor spring-purchased plants in mid-summer.\u00a0 My first and most urgent task is to liberate those languishing specimens from their nursery\/starter pots and either get them in the ground or into larger pots positioned in locations that might become permanent homes.\u00a0 Nursery pots do not give plants much room to stretch their roots, and leaving plants in them for too long is a good way to put those plants on the path to terminal decline.<\/p>\n

The Shasta daisies have fled the scene, after producing a bumper crop of flowers this year.\u00a0 The daisies are swiftly being overtaken by the rambunctious asters and before the Shastas are completely engulfed, they should be thinned.\u00a0 I am lucky that they have fairly shallow-roots, so getting them out is easy.\u00a0 It also allows the roses, swamped for weeks by the daisy tidal wave, to breathe and flower once more.<\/p>\n

It is axiomatic in gardening that dense planting crowds out weeds.\u00a0 That rule, while inspiring, does not always hold true.\u00a0 As I thin out the daisies, I invariably find weeds lurking among them.\u00a0 The most vigorous is stiltgrass, sometimes known as Mary\u2019s weed and dubbed Microstegium vimineum by plant taxonomists.\u00a0 It is not a familiar, old-timey weed, like crabgrass or dandelion, but a relative newcomer to my area.\u00a0 It arrived in the 1980\u2019s, like shoulder pads, parachute pants and the Sony Walkman.\u00a0 Unlike them, it has multiplied exponentially ever since.\u00a0 Featuring long, slender stems and elongated, almost grassy leaves, stiltgrass loves the edges of beds\u2014where you can usually spot it\u2014but does not eschew the middle of densely planted areas, where it is harder to see.\u00a0 It is also very easy to pull up, so a good summer clean-up on my property always includes an attempt at stiltgrass eradication<\/p>\n

With those holding area plants looming large in my mind, I have to decide which plants I should clean out all together.\u00a0 At some point in time, I bought a small tansy plant for its ferny foliage and yellow, button-like flowers.\u00a0 Now I have an enormous amount of tansy that is taking up space that would be better used for holding area plants that I have stronger feelings for.\u00a0 There is nothing really wrong with tansy, a traditional aromatic strewing herb and dye plant.\u00a0 It is simply invasive and standing between me and a more inspiring garden.\u00a0 I might save a small clump and grow it in a pot, but even that is only a slim possibility.<\/p>\n

A well-mulched garden is a neater and less weedy expanse, so part of my clean-up is a put-down–of the bags of shredded cedar mulch currently stacked at the rear of my driveway.\u00a0 Lugging the bags is occasionally painful, but the satisfaction I get from a fragrant, well-ordered bed is ample compensation.<\/p>\n

And when I finish all of the above, I still have to trim back the spent lily foliage, not to mention eradicting the wasps\u2019 nest in my upper back garden so I can finish removing the scraggly miniature box shrub next to it.\u00a0 I hate to evict any living creature, but the painful wasp stings that I have gotten while working on the box plants have convinced me that it is time.\u00a0 With the wasps and the box gone, I can finish work on the lavender hedge that I started planting weeks ago.<\/p>\n

If all goes according to plan, the lavender plants will be the last specimens to leave my holding area.\u00a0 Then I will be able to rest easy\u2014at least until the stiltgrass makes a dramatic return.\"Shastas\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My great-Aunt Adeline, known as \u201cQueenie\u201d to the family, was a small woman who carried a big broom.\u00a0 She swept the front sidewalk every morning, even if there was not a single ant, grass blade or maple samara to be seen.\u00a0 When she and my grandmother \u201cturned out the corners\u201d of the house for seasonal … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[85,2557,2560,2559,2558],"class_list":["post-3462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-summer","tag-garden-maintenance","tag-stiltgrass-microstegium-vimineum","tag-summer-clean-up","tag-thinning-perennials","tag-wasps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3464,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions\/3464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}