I took a break from creating more beds to just go ahead and work on getting everything in the ground that has a spot now. It looks like I should be able to take a couple days off next week to just work in the garden- so hopefully someone else doesn't snag those days off before I book them.
I can't even remember where I left off last time I posted. Basically, I've added eight 10'x10' beds so far this year along with my rambler row. I had two of those beds fully planted a few weeks ago and 4 that were solarizing waiting on grass to die. Since then, I weed barriered and mulched those four beds and last Monday I got in my sod cutter and have since cut two more beds out of the lawn without solarizing. I am extremely happy with the sod cutter! It's a manual, 12" wide, kick style from Maxim. The easy part is kicking it, the hard part is cleaning up the sod chunks. But, of course, that would be the heavy and dirty part with the big gas one as well. It's one of these:
It's really grown on me and the beds are so much easier to plant without working around so much weed barrier.
The two new beds are fully planted as of this evening and I've doubled back to plant the 4 weed barrier beds. I got the large plants in the center of one of them planted this evening, but, still have the iris outline to plant. Of course, that will be super time consuming because of the weed barrier. UNLESS- I maybe just remove 12" of weed barrier around the outside, cut the grass remnants out with my sod cutter and just plant like that instead. I might. It might really be faster.
Everything really needed water today- which is really annoying because we get rain the next three days- but, I went ahead and watered the most desperate looking even though they will get rain tomorrow.
I'm wildly disgusted by my dahlias. I need to go through and trash can a bunch of virused plants - from- oh yeah, the same small seller that sent me a bunch of blind tubers. The ones that did survive are all really virused. So, that's fun. I counted 8 virused plants today and checked the tags, all that seller again. I keep reminding myself that other than that seller- the other stuff looks good. But, I'm in a murky mood towards those things and just sort of over it. It will be something to do tomorrow evening while it's raining and too difficult to dig. At least they are all potted- but even so, does this mean all the healthy looking ones will have virus next year from being near those ones?
Anyhow. With the cool weather the oddball yellow colors really popped on them- it really explained why so many haven't got to be blooming size either- stunted from virus. Lesson learned- dahlias are not something you can buy from a new seller. You have to just stick with longer term hobbyists that really care about their plants- not all the 'flower farm' people who are just in it for a quick buck.
Toyed with the idea of just trashing all of them and starting fresh since of course these ones could have infected my healthy ones. BUT, I might as well experiment with overwintering these ones and get another year of practice before buying good ones. But, if I have more virus in the fall next year, might just trash them all for a fresh start. I thought roses were bad- but, roses are so much less disease prone than dahlias.
No comments:
Post a Comment