Sunday, May 3, 2009

The Garden Battle

Here are the gardens in our backyard. Actually, just half of them as there are more gardens along the back of the house and in the front yard. The previous owners planted them all.


You probably think it looks really nice...except maybe the sandbox in the middle. Lets take a closer look.



The weeds and plants are out of control. Every year we battle to keep the weeds out of the garden and the plants out of the lawn...but it looks like this year they have already won. It looks awful and extremely overwhelming. We have avoided using pesticides for the last 3 years thinking we could control weeds without the use of chemicals...but now realize it's impossible unless we plan to spend all our free time in the garden. So this year, we were going to use pesticides to regain control of the yard...but can't because pesticides have been banned in our area. So all I can do now is covet my neighbour's beautiful garden free backyard which also has a really nice deck and shed.


Although the task is daunting, I still love to see the new growth of the wanted plants coming back.


C was a great help in the garden this weekend...digging weeds and pulling out dead growth. I was a little shocked though at what she chose to do when she wasn't helping...cutting worms with a stick, or cutting an ant with the snipers, or poking holes in snail shells because she wanted the slug to come out. After I requested numerous times for her to be nicer to the bugs, she got upset and told me I never let her do stuff like this.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Word of advice once you get the weeds out of the garden.... mulch and lots of it. We maintain approx 6 inch of mulch (which means adding each year because it does decompose) and even though we do get some weeds, they are considerably less and much easy to just pull out. Our front lawn is another story. We have been trying to not use pesticides but I think the soil is poor so grass struggles but weeds thrive. I think we should just have someone scrap the lawn off and put new soil and sod down and then keep up with seeding the grass to crowd out the weeds.
Gardening is like the struggle between good and evil. You really have to rip out all the evil... down to the ends of the roots to get make sure they dont' come back again. :)
Best of luck!
SC

Lala's world said...

I showed J the pictures, he said your best bet is to dig it all up and start over! laying fresh turf or seeds down!
YIKES
thats a big job!!!

I used to torture small bugs/insects too, then I would feel SO bad and pray to God for forgiveness!

Nadine said...

I hope that it works out for you. Yards are so hard.