Overgrown Yard

Dennis,
You are banned from this thread :grin: since you make us all look very bad.

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I can completely relate with your issues @BobVance. Most of my 29 fruit trees are inside cages to protect them from deer. Because of this, and my lack of tending to them, quite a few of them have been taken over by weeds, even tho the area around them is kept mowed. It’s shameful how bad it’s got.

I think part of the problem is that I mulch the trees with straw, and within a month or two, the weeds start making their way up thru the straw, and eventually it’s like I didn’t do anything. I’ve got to find a better mulch than straw, I’m considering wood chips from now on.

I also have a strawberry patch in the back yard that looks like a savanna, it should be weeded and renovated.

I will say that my raspberry run is somewhat in decent shape, but my two blackberry runs need to be weeded and trellised.

Add to that, I’ve had to put out numerous fires this year, such as car repairs, house repairs, plus getting our gardens going, yard work, and so on. So, I haven’t had all the time I’ve needed to tend to my plants and trees. Plus, it’s been a very warm, sometimes hot, and dry summer. So, I don’t have a great desire to get out there when it’s 97, like it was today.

Still, I should have known what I got myself into planting all this stuff. It’s easy to plant a tree or a berry cane, but it’s a lot of work maintaining them when they grow up. If I had cared for them better, been more diligent about shaping them better, and fertlized them more often, I probably would have a better crop than I’ve had the last few years. Hopefully I’ll get into gear and make things look somewhat presentable.

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We have the same problem with weeds as you do, only during the other half of the year (December through April).

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for you folks that have a smaller property, use wood chips. i get mine from a aborist and put 3in around all my plants every spring. no weeds. the few that poke thru are easy to pull. it has to be green chips though as weeds can grow in composted stuff. as long as you don’t till it in, it won’t pull N from your soil. its some work to put it down but ALOT less work than pulling weeds. :wink: great for your soil as well! in the 7 years I’ve been mulching my property, I’ve added 5- 6in. of new soil on top of my clay/ rocky soil. I’m thinking of mulching again in the fall but I’m worried the voles will move in in the winter.

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Bob, I used grass clippings to cover the base of the trees. Some of trees are getting big so the hole is not real a big issue.

Tony

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This thread made me clean up my overgrown bed!
This is how it looked 2 days ago:

This is after couple of hours of weeding and mulching. The edging was already there. Not visible because weed was covering it.

I’m also a big fan of wood chips. I added wood chips around my trees this spring.

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This reminds me of the saying which goes something like “You may find that the purpose of your life is to provide others with an example of what not to do” :slight_smile:

Wow- those things are getting to be monsters. Any pics of this setup? I was describing it to someone IRL today and the first thing they asked for was pics…

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I am on a trip a couple of weeks. I will get a photo when I am back.

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I could not agree more with my friend Kate! In fact, I smile every time I look at this thread, so thank-you, Bob, for your honesty and humbleness !!! Every time I looked at a photo on this website in the past that was taken at a distance, I always saw perfectly manicured lawns, trees with perfect little weed-free circles around them-often with fluffy, weedless mulch, and rarely so much as an out-of place shovel left out in the open. Meanwhile, my orchard often has calf-high grass, even taller weeds, the mulch around some trees is half-gone and doted with weeds, and almost always there are some spare buckets, yard tools, fertilize bags/containers, a sprayer, and implements of whatever other project I started but haven’t finished! ha. I was starting to think everyone except me just kept immaculate orchards and gardens all day, every day, all year long. But when someone I respect as much as you, @BobVance and then all the others who have 'fessed up, come out of the closet, and admitted to having an overgrown yard/orchard at least part of the time, it truly is a big relief to me! :slight_smile: I no longer have to live in shame.ha Don’t get me wrong, its human nature for all of us to show our orchards and gardens and yards in the best possible light- I do it too- but its so nice to know that we’re all just putting our best foot forward in our photos and I’m not the only one who gets overwhelmed at times and lets our yards/orchards.gardens get away from us!

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You said it well, Kevin!

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I’m guessing you do not have Bahia grass!!!
:joy::joy::joy:. It LOVES mulch!!!

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This thread also makes me feel so much better (except for the show-off picture with all the mulch :wink: . I HATE the heat, and when it gets really hot I can no longer stand to go out to do anything except the most necessary tasks. As a result it’s always a total disaster area in late summer. Plus I’ve been away a lot this summer and the deer fawns have eaten EVERYTHING not fenced in, even stuff they supposedly hate. Every year around this time I vow to “consolidate” the garden into the fenced areas, and make it smaller, since I can never keep up. Then every spring I love it so much I expand it. SIGH.

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nope. worst thing here is creeping charlie and yarrow. but if it comes up through i zap it with a little herbicide. mulch here is a godsend.

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I was wondering if I was the only person that uses herbicide (Roundup).

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i try to use it sparingly. i do spray it around the edges of my wood chip beds to keep the weeds from getting in there , but only a few times a season. i have a bad back from the Army so stooping to weed is pretty painful.

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True, though my solution is to make the camera angle tighter. After all, there is no large area in my yard where everything is that perfect, even when things are going well.

I had to read that part to my wife and she almost fell over, between the surprise and laughing at me.

Agreed!

No, I’ve used it for a few main things:
1.) Parking areas (it is just weird if I have to mow a paved area, due to all the cracks :slight_smile: )
2.) Japanese knotwood- there was a lot of it between my yard and my neighbor. I tried hacking it back for a couple years without making much dent. Then, last year I started hacking and spraying it. Now, while it isn’t gone, it is small and sickly.
3.) Poison Ivy- it can grow to cover way too much area if left untreated. And while I haven’t had any reactions (knocks on wood), I know it can be pretty bad for some people, so I try to get rid of it.

Here’s the fastest growing one after 14 days. I should have mowed it a bit sooner. They were just planted this spring, so that is a lot of growth they have put on. In fact, if they hadn’t grown so much, they wouldn’t have gotten bent over from the rain this morning. I’ve got jujubes at other properties that are smaller, even though they are 1-2 years older.

I got home early enough the on Wednesday that I was able to tackle the growth for an hour or so.
Before:
Before_weed_whaching_08-21-2019
After:
After_Weed_whacking_08-21-2019

I had to take the “after” pic again, when it was very blurry the first time. It turns out that things were (or rather I was) hot enough that the lens on my cell phone fogged up in my pocket.

I also found some things I wasn’t expecting. Turns out that I have some Lane muscadine grapes growing on the vine I planted 2 years ago.
Lane_08-21-2019

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Dang mosquitoes are keeping me out of my garden.

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