Saturday, May 19, 2012

Surprisingly Few Weeds!!!

I wasn't sure what I would see when I got to my old home.  It had been quite a while since anybody had cared for it.  Nobody had gone through to pick the weeds, and nobody had watered the lawn.  I was ready for an overgrown disaster area.

You can imagine my shock when that was not what I found!

The grass, quite naturally, was yellow and crispy.  My old home is in a desert, after all.  The interesting thing, though, is that even with that, it didn't really look bad.  There were some spots where green was still trying to poke out, so I knew it would recover with enough care.

The weeds, while gigantic, weren't really all that bad, either.  They were huge, yes, but there weren't many of them.  Removing all wildflowers from the backyard took less than fifteen minutes.  Easy!

And yes, they had to be removed.  The city has an ordinance in place that requires all weeds to be removed before they reach 12 inches in height.  Allowing them to grow any higher can cause you to have to pay a nice fine if anyone complains.






Now, I could be mistaken, but the false dandelion above seems a bit higher than 12 inches...

I sure am lucky that the neighbors are all so wonderful!!!

So, I had to remove a few really, really big weeds.  But since there was a rather small amount of them, I think it's safe to say that my decision to pluck weeds by the root, rather than spray them with harsh chemicals, was the correct choice.  Because there were few seeds able to make it into the yard, there were very few weeds to pick later.

Mulching was another thing that I had done.  Every time the grass was cut, or any time leaves fell from the trees, I used them to mulch my gardens.  This kept enough moisture and nutrients in the ground to ensure strong root systems... even though no watering had been done for a couple of months.  The strong root systems were able to help keep the weeds at bay.

Letting mother nature do the majority of the work really does pay off!

I also had a wonderful surprise waiting for me.  My beloved concord grapes were in great health, and...

They had tiny, young grapes beginning to form!  Bonus!!!

More on that excitement tomorrow.

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