Re: [gardeners] Planning Ahead
Margaret Lauterbach (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Mon, 03 Nov 1997 18:45:45 -0700
At 12:48 PM 11/3/97 +0000, you wrote:
>I got some news today that sort of knocked the wind out of my sails.
>I'm going to be having abdominal surgery and I thought I was going to
>be doing this around Jan - Feb. Today I found out that it's probably
>going to be done in 6 - 7 months. (No, I'm not dying and it's not
>something I really want to talk about.) From a gardening point of
>view this is disasterous. That would put me having surgery in the
>May - June region -- right when the veggie garden gets planted.
>
>One of the problems, as you all know, is the much awaited January
>Catalog Arrival Festival. It's the January CAF that gets me through
>most of the winter what with the debating, planning, laying out the
>gardens a few dozen times, more debating, planning and finally
>ordering. Even after the ordering is done there's the laying out the
>beds several times over to help get you through those gray days. I
>look forward to the CAF and post-CAF times as one of the high points
>of the gardening season.
>
>Now I'm in a quandry. Should I order seeds and hope? What will
>happen to my gardens when I can't tend them during the summer growing
>season? My spousal unit is definitely not a gardener. While he'll
>happily pick a tomato (guess I'll plant them) he's such a non-violent
>person that he'd never pull a weed -- he might kill it. (Yeah, I
>thought he was just lazy too until he explained this life and death
>and violence thing to me.) The problem is that he might not find the
>tomatoes with all the weeds growing.
>
>And my flower beds -- what am I going to do when I can't get out
>there and pull weeds? Do you guys know what bindweed can do in one
>uncontrolled year? Letting bindweed run wild in your flower bed is
>akin to letting kudzu go next to your house -- you might never find
>your flowers again. I've never found a thickness of mulch that was
>thick enough to stop bindweed. Well, that's not true. It doesn't
>grow under our house so I'd have to say that a 20 foot deep pile of
>much won't have too much bindweed growing in it.
>
>Help, help, help! I've got to plan ahead. Tell me what to do.
>And please, don't tell me not to panic. Panic is all that's keeping
>me from going nuts.
>
>Liz
>
Cousin Liz, were I you, I'd go right ahead and plan out your garden and
order your seeds. Only thing I'd do different, considering the
circumstances, is to put down weedcloth between the rows of your veggie
garden. Well, your flower garden may go to hell for a couple of months,
but that ain't final. if you have weedcloth between your veggie rows, the
only place weeds can come up is between the plants, and they can't get THAT
far ahead of you before you'll be out there yanking them out or at least
pointing to what needs to be yanked. Well, now.....I think Ray knows some
of the things that must be yanked by hisself. B.Lawndale
>