When your one acre yard still shows the outline of gardens first laid out in the 1960s, and a certain invasive plant's roots go nearly three feet deep and ten feet out in most directions, and you're still unearthing bits of Christmas light brackets from decades past...
...and you found a flint arrow point, and you are pulling up geological evidence of previous ground cover designs, it's no longer just gardening. It's archaeology.
She assembled the women of her tribe to help uncover the mysteries of Cold Knob Loop Road. The ancient burial ground proved out to be a veritable gold mine for ancient macrame & melanine Title: Women in archaeology - Wikipedia
The reason this project has been taking so damn long is because we are literally (and I use literally in the literal sense) digging out every garden, cleaning up plants and either moving them or re-planting them in place. We have hundreds of irises, all knotted and overdue for rhizome maintenance, too. We vowed that this year EVERYTHING WOULD GET DONE
I teased out a dozen individual plants, snapped off the spent rhizomes and we will re-plant maybe a dozen of them rather than the hundreds that were struggling along.
T. A. Lowery
- just dig them up, and you'll probably see a potato-like growth underground. That's the rhizome. If there's a lot of blobs of rhizome leading up to one final one with leaves coming out of it, just snap off ALL the leading blobs and only keep the final one with the leaves, and hopefully, good roots. That's what you need. Leaves, rhizome, roots.
Toss out the spent rhizome blobs and replant the good one. Best to let the rhizome be a bit above the soil, and Monty Don recommends pointing it towards the sunrise, as they actually enjoy sunbathing.
Thanks for the tips! Now just to find the time. I also want to get rid of the overgrown shrubs surrounding the tree the irises are near. Wouldn't mind having the entire tree removed. It's the one that dropped a large part of itself on my house earlier this year. Wasn't until a couple of months later that I realized one of the front windows was broken.
Outer window, not inner window. We don't know if the tree did it or the service our insurance company sent. The list of things I'd like to do to and around my house goes on.
Sounds like you could simple raze that entire area to bare soil and start over,
T. A. Lowery
- Irises are tough. Just pick through the ripped up dirt and you'd find plenty to replant.
I love them, Tan. We have counts on fingers seven clusters of them - the four corners of the house, plus a few more as garden accents. If you want to keep them in a tight bunch though, you have to stay proactive with chopping off runners and pulling up the wayward plant.
Other than pulling up the weedy-type plants, is there anything I should do before it seriously snows (we had a snow-shower yesterday!) to my ground-type planting areas?
Also, I have a planter and growing-light for cellar salad-plants! What sort of soil would be good for starting the seeds? I've ordered warming pads too to put around the bottom.
We had a few snowflakes yesterday! And I was gardening with frozen toes. Anyway, if you have bulbs for spring (crocus, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, etc), plant them now. OH AND GARLIC! It's a bulb, yanno.
I had great joy this year finding heritage bulbs. Exhibited massive self control, which was good because Beloved is the one who wound up planting them all. We are taking this property from grass with a few flower beds to cottage garden and wildflower meadow. Going to be fun making that transition. 6 lb of wildflower seeds scattered last week.
Title: Women in archaeology - Wikipedia
Also, I have a planter and growing-light for cellar salad-plants! What sort of soil would be good for starting the seeds? I've ordered warming pads too to put around the bottom.