Those of you that aren’t yet convinced that Bradford Pears are evil, spreading little thorn covered demons, I want you to take a good look at the photo above.
That stump is what remains of the biggest Bradford Pear tree I think I’ve ever seen. Now I can’t blame Pa Paw for planting this beast, because when he planted it, people were told that Bradford’s were sterile and were the perfect ornamental tree for any home landscape. It wasn’t until 20-30 years later that they realized that this was, in fact, complete and utter BS.
Bradford pears do, in fact, bear fruit. They are not sterile as once believed. This means the birds eat them and spread them EVERYWHERE. Worse yet, the trees that sprout from that fruit are not true to their original form, but true to the root stock that the Bradford’s are grown on, which is the Chinese Callery Pear. Here the Midwest, the Callery Pear is considered an invasive plant. The photo above is what happens when you try to cut down a Bradford and can’t or don’t burn out every last bit of the stump and root system along with it. Unless I want to destroy a huge patch of Paw Pa’s Surprise Lilies and Day Lilies, I will be cutting down little Callery Pears that sprout off of this root system from hell for YEARS.
Did I mention the new trees have thorns? Thorns that are as big and sharp as those on Honey Locust (which we also have here). These lovely trees have been known to grow in thickets so dense and so covered in thorns that they will shred tractor tires or bulldozer treads of the machinery trying to clear them from unattended land.
So once again this year, I’ll be hunting them. If I see them in the woods or our fields, they are immediately cut down. I’ll cut all these sprouts off (AGAIN) this year, I’m hoping that eventually the root system will die out and they’ll stop coming up. I may be fooling myself with wishful thinking…
My other option is to dig up all the those lilies, find them a new spot and burn the ground deep enough to destroy the Bradford’s Spawn, then let it recover. I have considered this option.
Seriously folks, don’t plant these freaking trees. They look pretty and innocuous sitting at the nursery or garden center, but they are in fact, the Children of Hell. If you’d like a pretty white tree to plant that blooms in early spring may I recommend a Service Berry or Wild Plum. These both grow nicely in the Midwest and are actual natives, so they add wildlife value to your landscape. Or grow actual pear trees, like Bartlett or Kiefer Pears, then you get fruit AND pretty flowers. Our domestic plums bloomed last week also and were beautiful. Or if you’d like a little color- Ornamental cherries are nice, Peach trees have gorgeous pinky-peach blossoms. Redbuds are amazing for color (and you can make lemonade from the flowers)!
I keep seeing people in my gardening and landscaping forums asking, what is this purple flowered weed that’s taking over my yard and how do I get rid of it?
It’s early April and the grass in our yard is just beginning to grow. There is an abundance of wild onion, clover and chickweed already sprouting as well as a carpet of purple from henbit, several species of violet and dead nettle. This week I’m starting to see the occasional spot of yellow from dandelions.
If your yard is full of henbit or dead nettle, be patient. This is what my yard looks like right now:
I’ve seen several articles online claiming that henbit will choke out grass, but I’ve yet to see it happen. All of that purple- that’s henbit, with a little dead nettle and a lot of tiny violets thrown in for good measure. The bees freaking love it, in fact all the emerging pollinators love it and that’s good news for both my currently blooming orchard and my soon to be blooming garden. I want to draw as many native pollinators to our property as possible. If you’re a save the bees kind of person, you’ll want to leave the flowers too. But here’s the good news- dead nettle and henbit aren’t going to destroy your grass. They will carpet the yard for about a month, then go to seed and die back to the ground until next year. The emerging grass will then take over, thicken up and make you spend hours mowing it all summer. Be PATIENT. Your grass is coming, just not yet.
This is henbit close up. My daughter likes to pick the little flowers off and eat them because they are sweet. Henbit can be eaten fresh or cooked as an herb, used in teas, salads, wraps and smoothies. All parts of the plant above ground are edible and high in iron, vitamins and fiber.
This is dead nettle or purple nettle. If you have this ‘weed’ in your yard, rejoice. It is a medicinal herb and can be used as an astringent and diuretic. Applied topically, it’s anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal and anti-bacterial. The leaves and be applied to wounds as a poultice. You can also use the leaves fresh or dried in tea. I use dead nettle to make dead nettle salve, which my family uses to treat everything from bug bites and boils to rashes of all kinds. I even use it as lip balm in winter.
Both of these plants are part of the mint family, which means they may look as if they are just taking over a yard. Don’t freak. By May they will be almost completely gone and your grass will take over until next year. You’ll never even know they were there. You could try and rip them out or catch all the seeds to stop them from coming back. You could use one of those nasty herbicides and then re-seed your yard with grass. Or you could leave them alone. Let the bees have their food, maybe try a bit yourself and have an excuse not to mow for a few more weeks. 🙂
So remember when I said we’d see how this goes and I’d either get trees or dead, moldy sticks?
I got dead moldy sticks.
Let me explain why.
I put lids on these, added heat mats below and watered the cups from above. All of these things combined created the perfect medium for mold growth, which in turn kept my cuttings from rooting properly. I like posting my complete failures on this page alongside the successes, so that you might learn from my moldy sticks and not have moldy sticks of your own. Plants need four things to thrive: Sunlight. I had a grow light on them and they are right by a Southern window, so that was all good. Water. I watered AND misted them regularly, because this is what I saw on the YouTube video about starting cuttings and was following their example. Soil. They were planted in peat pellets inside sterile potting mix. Air. Plants need to breathe. Their roots need to breathe. I seriously neglected that last one. Long story short, my cuttings suffocated. Then they molded because they were dead. So sticks and all went in the compost pile (not the plastic cups) and I started over.
I only had 4 survivors from this experiment. As of yesterday, I’m down to three. 😦
So, I’m doing what gardeners do. I’m learning from my mistakes and trying again. I replaced the plastic cups with peat pots. I don’t water from the top down with these, I just pour water in the bottom of the crate and let the pots soak it up. I still put the lid on at night, but during the day, it’s left off so they get maximum air flow. Some folks I’ve read put a small fan on their seedlings for air flow.
These are pear cuttings from Tom’s grandpa’s trees that he planted over 30 years ago. There are only three pears left of the orchard he planted back then and two plum trees, one of which had a very bad case of gummosis and is attempting to recover after having over 98% of the tree removed. The pears have fire blight. I’m treating them, but I’ve already lost one to the disease and I wanted to get starts of Pa Paw’s trees before I lost the rest.
This batch is looking much healthier, so I’m hopeful. I’ll keep you posted as to their success or failure- if this round doesn’t work, I’ll get some stronger rooting hormone and try one more time before summer hits.
This is two months growth. The weed fabric is the thick, expensive stuff you get at the nursery. It seems to stop small stuff like grasses, but thistles, polk, the blackberry canes all push right through it.
The cardboard is so far blocking everything. The grass that came through is only there because the cardboard there isn’t overlapping in that spot.
I’ve had some health stuff going on (yay arthritis) and now garden season is here so haven’t had a chance to post much but I wanted to share a quick tip.
Save your cardboard boxes for the yard and garden! I’ve been weeding and weed-eating around trees for years.
While laying down cardboard to create grass-free areas in my garden for walkways, I realized I should have been using this stuff around all my trees too.
Cardboard is great garden material and if you do a lot of online shopping like I do, there’s an endless free supply. In the garden, it holds in moisture, it keeps weeds at bay, worms absolutely LOVE the stuff and it biodegrades slowly over several years. It’s also soft enough it won’t girdle trees, which could be a danger with the plastic ‘mulch’ discs.
If you’re concerned about the look of cardboard, throw a little mulch on top. I put the discs down and jammed my tree cages through the cardboard to hold it in place. I use the heavy, thick stuff for tree rings. The thin stuff can be used to line pots, or I give it to our rabbits to shred (which eventually winds up in the garden) or tear up and throw in compost.
Friends that visit our house in summer and see the massive garden next to our house often ask me where I do my plant/seed shopping and what I like to grow out there.
I’ll start by saying that my family are not especially adventurous when it comes to vegetable eating. My husband likes his starchy basics: potatoes, corn, peas- pretty much in that order. My daughter is a bit more adventurous; she’ll eat tomatoes, cucumber and snow pea pods in addition to the starchy veggies. They both love strawberries, blackberries and Tom’s jelly from my elderberries last year was a huge hit. I will eat just about any fruit or vegetable, even try some that I’ve never had before and can’t pronounce. I’m less adventurous in the meat department. It took a year or two of living here before I would try venison again, I still won’t touch squirrel or rabbit. Forget the more mid-west exotic fare like groundhog, snake or snapping turtle.
I’m trying to branch out. I’ve been following several Missouri homestead, wildcrafting and foraging sites. I’ll try a lot of mushrooms and edible weeds that my family isn’t too keen to put on their plate. I figure if nothing else, this stuff could keep us alive if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse (might re-think that snapping turtle then too).
This year I’m branching out into more herbs and growing a few unusual things like Stevia and my own tea.
First of all, I have to say that for live plants, my local nursery is the bomb. It’s a little place called Huffman’s out on Highway B, just outside of St James. The staff there are lovely, the owners are wonderful, everyone I’ve dealt with there has been knowledgeable, considerate and they always tell us they’d love to see us again. Huffman’s is my go-to place for mulch, live plants, landscape fabric or just to go wander around browse for ideas. They have a really cool gift shop inside; tons of yard art and they carry that potting soil with the frog on it that the marijuana growers supposedly like. (If it’s good for growing pot, it should be stellar for tomatoes, right?) I’ve gotten several blackberry plants from there that have done very well and we always go get at least several annuals to decorate the back porch rail each year. So this is my shop local place, hands down. In fact, since I’ve found them, I hardly step foot in the garden center at Lowes or Menards, which is where I used to get 90% of my plants from when I lived at the Lake. If you’re in the area, go check them out. They’re on Facebook and online at https://www.huffmansflowersofthefield.com/
Ok, now for the Online shops. These are who I do a lot of my pre-order of seeds from, for the stuff I want to start in the house early or when I want something really specific as I’m planning out the garden in the winter months.
My #1 favorite (and where I spent the bulk of my $ this year) is Baker Creek Seeds. I do most of my seed shopping in January/February before most of the local nurseries are even open after winter break. I’ve found that if I wait until March or April, most everything online is out of stock or extremely picked over. The very well-known sites like Burpee are already having stock issues. Baker Creek had to send out a notice that they were having issues with paper shortages, so seed packages and catalogs could be an issue for them next year. No worries about the catalogs though, they have their entire catalog online with the same pictures and descriptions as the print version.
You’ve probably heard a lot of hype about heirloom seeds in recent years, but not everyone knows why. Heirlooms can be saved year after year. They are true to the parent plant, which means that they are consistently the same, year after year from one planting to the next. Some of these seeds have been around since the 1800’s, passed along from generation to generation. This means you can grow the same pink beefsteak tomato that your great, great grandmother grew in her garden when you were two or the same flowers she had lining the walkway to her house. These plants are tried and true performers, you know what to expect. You know what they are going to taste like, you know that they’ll be the same year after year after year. Baker Creek sells a lot of heirlooms. They are not all native heirlooms though- they get their seeds from farms all over the world. They pride themselves on carrying unusual varieties that you won’t find anywhere else and you certainly will never see at a Big Box store garden center. The homepage of their website is a testament to this- showcasing all the black vegetables and flowers that they are carrying this year. The main office of Baker Creek is out of Mansfield, Missouri (Home of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Festival- if you’ve never been, you should check it out.) You can order online from them at https://www.rareseeds.com/
My #2 this year was PineTree. This is where I picked up the things that were out of stock everywhere else or other sites just didn’t sell. They still had garlic bulbs in stock (out on every other site I checked!), they also had white sage, pinto beans and an heirloom green onion that doesn’t produce bulbs, just the green tops in bunches. This is my first-year ordering from them, so I’ll have to let you know how I liked them later. They shipped my order quickly; I should be seeing it sometime this week. The garlic will be shipped in fall when it’s time to plant. They have a nice selection of loose-leaf teas and herbs for purchase on their site also. Website is https://www.superseeds.com/
#3 Ferry Morse.
I’ve always associated Ferry Morse with Walmart seed shopping- I think because this used to be the primary brand that Walmart Garden centers carried every spring. I’ve purchased a lot of Ferry Morse seed over the years, both from Walmart and online and have had decent results. A couple years ago, they were the only place I could find that had birdhouse or bottle gourds in stock when I went looking for them in late spring. Their prices are awesome. They have a nice little live plant sale going on right now- I’ve not tried their live plants before, but I ordered a couple of tomato plants, we’ll see how it goes. They don’t have a massive selection and most of what they offer is pretty common, but if you’re looking for good basics, their prices can’t be beat. I plant marigolds in EVERY raised bed as companion plants and they have just about every basic marigold available for under $2 a pack of seeds. Also, it was free shipping for any order over $35, where most garden sites don’t offer free shipping until you hit the $75 or more mark. https://ferrymorse.com/
#4 Burpee Seeds.
These folks were always my old favorite and I looked forward to their catalog in the mail every year because it meant spring was almost here, regardless of what that stupid groundhog had to say. In the past couple years though, I’ve had trouble with a lot of Burpee’s stuff being out of stock very early on. I just got my catalog a few weeks ago and already they are completely out of every kind of garlic, several varieties of onion and some of the tomato packs are unavailable. I blame the stupid pandemic- people who have never gardened started gardening during 2020, even if it was just a pot of tomatoes or strawberries on their apartment patio, they had something. Burpee is well advertised, well known and popular, meaning they sell out of stuff faster than the more obscure, lesser-known sites. Because of this, I didn’t get a ton of stuff from them this year. I did find a Chocolate Peppermint plant that I searched for and couldn’t find elsewhere. They also had table grape plants. You would think being in St James, which is considered “Midwest Wine Country” that grape plants could be found in abundance, but if they are out there, I’ve yet to find them. I found a couple at the big box stores, that did well until I took them out of the box. 😦 I’m trying my luck again this year with a pair from Burpee. The Amish that used to own our property once worked in the grape fields outside of town. I see lots of folks in town with backyard grape arbors. I have no desire to make wine, but would love a few table grapes to pick each year. If you’re going to visit Burpee, I would do it now rather than later, they are selling out of their more popular items fast! They still have lots of flowers and landscape plants. https://www.burpee.com/
Just as an FYI, I’m not an influencer and I don’t get anything from any of these companies from sharing my opinions about their sites or products. I’m not a paid endorser or affiliated with them in any way. I did post a link on Facebook for Ferry Morse because they gave me one of those, “Share this link and we’ll give you a percentage off for every person that signs up for an account…” So I guess if we’re friends on Facebook AND you click that AND you order stuff, THEN I am getting something from it… but it’s only a 10% of coupon or something. Nothing all that exciting. LOL
I would first and foremost though encourage you, especially if you are a new gardener, find a local nursery. Not the garden center at Lowes, Menards or Home Depot- but an actual local nursery like Huffman’s above. Try several of them. We have two in our town, both are decent, Huffman’s people won me over in the end though and I’ll go to them every time. Local nurseries will know which plants do best in your area. They’ll know how those plants perform, they’ll know what issues they may have, they can make recommendations based on your space and growing conditions or the amount of time you have to dedicate to your garden. The people working at Lowes will stare at you confused when you ask for Blood Meal and say, “We’ve got Miracle Grow?” They don’t know about most of the plants there and they don’t care. They go out and drench them every day as they’re told and stop if something turns brown and crunchy. You’re not just paying for a plant; you’re paying for knowledge and help making an investment. Local nursery staff can tell you whether that plant will do well in your space. They can tell you if deer will devour it or not. They can tell you if it’s going to draw hordes or Japanese beetles to your yard. They can tell you if it will spread out of control and should be kept in a pot or if it is ok to put in your landscape beds. The people at Home Depot do not notice or care that you bought mint and you’re planting it in your landscape beds. Responsible local nurseries won’t sell you things off of the conservation invasive list that will make your neighbor’s curse you for years. (Dear Lowes, stop selling people Bradford Pear please!!!)
So, this isn’t just another “Shop Local!” pitch. If you find the right fit, you’ll find someone that actually cares about the plants they sell, they want their customers to be happy and come back, they want your garden to be a raving success because it will mean your friends and family will want to shop with them too.
I’ve been sick for over a week with some sinus thing that managed to sneak its way into my lungs and try to give me pneumonia. No, it’s not the “C” word. After several days of antibiotics I’m starting to feel human again. Today its 74°F outside. In December. Even if I was half dead, I’d have to drag myself out on a day like today. Plus, I had trees to plant.
I’ve decided that our yard is seriously lacking in fall color. We are mostly surrounded by oaks, hickory, walnut and cedar. Even the sweetgum up by my soon to be shop don’t get that gorgeous red and orange that I see along the streets in town, they are a disappointing yellow.
I did a little research and decided I’d like to start incorporating a few maples into the landscape. Not only are they usually stand outs in fall color, they provide good shade, they don’t have a reputation for being as breakable as the Bradford pear I cut down last year (always a gorgeous red in fall, but vile and invasive, had to go). I opted for a bare root sugar maple from Arbor Day’s website; as an added bonus it came with a free red maple. 🍁
Hopefully not a deer snack
Arbor Day sends decent instructions with their bare root trees, but I’ve heard lots of folks complain their success with them is hit and miss. The maple I paid for was almost 4 ft and had a really decent mass of established root on it. We’re having a mild fall right now, so I feel pretty good about getting this in and getting it settled before it’s subjected to harsh weather.
I’ve been bad in the past about skipping the pre-planning part of tree planting, only to later curse myself for not considering how TALL, how w-i-d-e or how invasive surface roots can be in some areas. I gave it a lot of thought this time. I researched, I read up on species before deciding, I watched light conditions, stuck my shovel in the ground and looked at it from different angles and inside the house. See the shovel at the corner of the barn?
I cannot stress enough the headache it will save you later, just planting your tree in the right place. You need to picture how it will look when it’s at full height and maximum spread. Some trees can be trimmed up underneath, some look ridiculous if you do this, it can even destabilize a few. Plant in the wrong spot and you’re making a lot of work for yourself later, if it doesn’t grow too large to be moved at all. I’ve seen lots of folks have to cut out beautiful trees because the wrong tree was planted just too close to their house or foundation.
2. If you get bare root trees like these, and the roots look like this with very little root ball, you may want to hold them back a season or two. I know the little pamphlet says they’ll establish roots over fall and do better in spring, but if your fall goes from mild to Siberia a week after you plant, those little guys just may not have quite enough root to pull through. I looked two weeks out and it looks ok, but if I were worried, I’d pot them up in potting soil and they’d spend a year or two like that until they have a nice, strong root ball. I put them in ground when they’re about 4ft tall and have a pot full of roots to get them started. Potted trees frim the nursery are way more expensive, but often perform better than tiny, fragile bare root trees. Have a little patience and you can save a fortune. The same sugar maple I bought for $15 was at least $50 when purchased in a pot.
3. I don’t want to just reiterate the rest if the tree planting instructions, but I do have one more piece of advice for those of you planting in clay soil. The instructions will tell you not to amend your soil. This is good advice, because your tree may not work to push its roots past the amended area. Trees can be lazy, like people. It’s also hard on fragile roots to work themselves through heavy clay.
If you don’t want to wait on potted trees or spend 3x the price, you can help a bare root tree by digging a HUGE hole. By this, I mean dig your hole out several feet from where the actual tree stands and a couple feet down from where it’s going to sit in the ground. Backfill your hole with loosened clay and sit the tree on top if that, you don’t want to bury it below the line it was planted at in the nursery. The reason for digging, then filling is to mechanically break up the clay, so the tree roots don’t have to do all the hard work.
We have cow pasture dirt- no rocks, at least 6 inches of topsoil, it drains and holds water fairly well for clay. You can see in the photo, I still dug a hole much larger than the tree required before planting. If we still lived at the Lake of the Ozarks, where our clay was either paste or concrete, I would have dug an even wider hole.
Final advice- don’t skip the mulch. When cold, sun, wind or heat start abusing your new trees, mulch can make the difference between a tree that pulls through or dies. This is in the tree planting instructions I got from Arbor Day, but it can’t be stressed enough. Mulch for a new tree is really, really, really important.
If you don’t have mulch on hand when you plant, chopped up leaves or straw work well. I’ve even used torn up cardboard. The trees I plant around our fields I throw an old tire on. It’s a good wind break and helps hold moisture around the roots. It also keeps me from running them over with the lawn tractor.
For detailed step by step instructions on planting a bare root tree, you can go to Arbor Day website. (They have video too)
Happy Holidays in case I don’t get back here until after NY.
I’m hoping I don’t get hate mail from this post, but I guess if I do, I’ll look at it as a new and interesting experience.
I’m not sure who started the Leave the Leaves campaign, as there are several groups out there collecting funds and trying to educate the public to their point if view. If you are in ANY sort of gardening forum on social media, I’m sure you’ve come across this discussion- sometimes even heated enough that the admins have to get involved and pry people apart.
Leave the leaves campaign
Here’s one of the posters that was being passed around just the other day. Several members commented that they were no longer removing leaves from their yards, that they were doing their part to, “Save the pollinators!” and “Grow native!” Two mantras that are VERY popular among the gardening community right now. They were taking turns contrariamente congratulating each other on their efforts and declaring their righteousness when a man commented, “I’m not leaving my leaves. I like my yard and my grass.”
You would have thought from the responses that he’d declared he eats children and fertilizes his grass with the blood of cute puppies. They flat out attacked him. They told him he was a fool for maintaining a grass lawn, a bigger fool for cleaning up his leaves and those were some of the nicer comments.
Lots of leaves
This is now the world we live in though, where those with an unpopular opinion are bullied, belittled, shamed or even downright threatened. You’d think gardeners are peaceful people, but it can be a real passion and anything people are passionate about, they are willing to fight over.
I’m not condemning the Leave the Leaves campaign entirely. It’s based in truth, it makes some really good points and leaves can prove very beneficial in gardening. BUT (you knew it was coming) a few of the ads or information I’ve seen passed around about leaving leaves has been a bit deceptive.
I’ve seen claims that it will not harm your lawn, that it actually feeds it, because the leaves break down into soil. Let the leaves pile up in an inconspicuous area if you want to test this and see what happens to the lawn underneath. My oak leaves lock together nicely, especially when wet, forming a dense, impenetrable mat that will not allow light or air to pass through. It will suffocate and destroy any vegetation growing underneath. This is a great environment for supporting slugs, salamanders and roly polys, but not such a great environment for supporting grass or plants. Too many leaves will suffocate plants and kill a lawn, not feed it. I neglected to clean the leaves from this front bed (below) last year and I lost several of my bulbs- of the purple clover I had planted, only one came back up, the crocus did not do as well and the violets absolutely took over. The roses also have fungal issues this year, which may also be because of the heavy leaves under and around them. Leaves are a great space for fungus of all sorts to thrive.
I don’t “Leave the Leaves” here. It’s damaging to my landscape plants. it causes drainage issues, I will now have to treat roses with fungicide because of it and I really dislike using chemicals in our yard or garden.
Maybe my biggest reason for not leaving the leaves around our house is it draws insects, which is exactly what the poster above is telling folks to save. We had an infestation of brown recluse on this property when we moved in. The exterminator had to come out several times and spray and put sticky powder in the attic before we stopped seeing them in the house. If I let leaf debris sit around the house, they still come inside in the fall, looking for someplace warm to spend the winter. When we first moved, I was cleaning the garage, which was also infested with recluse and got bit on my bicep. It was painful and itched like mad around the bite; a couple days later I had a hole in my arm about a quarter inch deep where the venom ate the flesh away. Recluse normally stay hidden in walls and ceilings where you don’t ever see them (hence their name) but there was a lot of clutter in the garage and a lot of paper and boxes. They love any sort of leaves, decaying wood, paper, cardboard that they can hide in. 6 months later, I was trimming dead wood out of walnut tree in the backyard, a spider fell out of the tree and into the back of my sports bra. As soon as I moved and the bra tightened against the spider, it bit. That one felt like I’d been stung by a wasp. I had my daughter hold the bra out so the “wasp” could escape and a huge recluse fell out instead.
This time the pain wasn’t just bad, it was excruciating. I ran a fever, I felt sick and dizzy for days. I treated the wound with activated charcoal and Prid drawing salve (how I wish I’d had my dead nettle salve then!) to pull as much venom from the wound as possible. I kept it very clean, even though it hurt like hell to clean it after it opened up. In spite of no infection directly in the wound, I developed cellulitis in the surrounding tissue and had to go to the doctor for antibiotics and steroids about a week in. This bit went deep, you could have put a quarter halfway into my shoulder. It also spread to an area over the size of a half dollar. I still have a nasty scar on my shoulder blade to show for it.
All spiders love leaves, not just recluse and I’ve noticed a rise in the population of wolf spiders here since we knocked the recluse population down greatly. (thank goodness! they will kill recluse.) I spotted at least 3 recluse running for cover as I was clearing the leaves around the foundation of our house this past week. That’s 3 that ran for the yard and will hopefully go find another place to inhabit besides our siding. Which brings me to my last point.
Piles of leaves, especially wet leaves built up over time can destroy wooden house siding, even hardybacker will succumb to it if left long enough. They will also permanently stain concrete porches and patios or exposed foundation walls. As the leaves break down, the leach out tannin oils that stain brown and yellow, which is nearly impossible to remove from grey stone or concrete. Imagine leaving a sopping wet blanket on your beautiful wood kitchen table for 3 months straight. You wouldn’t do that, nor should you leave piles of wet leaves against wooden siding or decks if you don’t want the wood to rot and be destroyed.
So as with all gardening advice, I would encourage you to read into the SCIENCE behind what you’re being told to do and not just jump on the latest viral post or fad (I’m looking at YOU EPSOM SALT). Also use a little common sense, if you’re gifted in that area. Leaves aren’t doing any organic good on your hardscapes or clogging up the gutters on your house. If you live in town and the city takes leaves, find out where they take them. Many cities now haul them to a composting facility where they are broken down and sent back out as beneficial compost for lawns and gardens. As for me, I have a yard that is close to 5 acres, full of huge, mature oak trees and that’s JUST the yard. In total, we have 40 acres and another 30 that is family land of fields, woods and yard. I’ve never raked or burned leaves here. I wait for the bulk of them to fall, then run the mower one last time in November, chopping them into small pieces and blowing the bulk of them into the edges of the woods and the hay fields. Fireflies lay their eggs in those areas, the mice, turtles and all those other small creatures on the poster above like to hang out there, so THAT IS WHERE I leave the leaves. They aren’t damaging my house and drawing recluse, they are in the edges of the woods where they give all those little critters a place to hide that isn’t in my front door. If you can have undisturbed areas like that, I see no issue at all with tidying up your hardscape or chopping up the leaves to mulch trees instead of letting them lie on the lawn, where you don’t have to share your space with creeping crawling things. Regardless of what the article in Woman’s Day Magazine may be telling you is the RIGHT THING to do. (Personally I can’t trust a magazine that gives diet advice and cupcake recipes on the same cover anyway)
If you don’t have woods or an “edge” to send your leaves to, maybe chop them up and use to mulch perennial garden beds. Chopped up, they don’t form those thick, dense, air blocking mats I was talking about. Once mulched, they break down in a season into compost. I’ve also used them as a layer in my Hugelkulture beds or lasagna gardening. They are a great brown layer to fill in around larger sticks and branches. Earthworms adore a layer of chopped up leaves.
Just stop the “Leave the Leaves!” shaming folks. Everyone’s yard is different, every garden is different and there isn’t a one method fits all that works for any situation. Gardening is one of those things that is as individual as the person doing it and that’s one of the really great things about it. Suggestions are helpful, education is helpful, yelling at someone that they are horrible destroyers of the environment because they didn’t want piles of leaves around their house or haven’t cut down their Bradford Pear yet is ridiculous. We want to ENCOURAGE people to love gardening and be drawn to it, not scare them away forever because we let our passion or dedication to the latest fad override our basic human decency. There is too much of that in the world today and gardening is supposed to draw people back to nature, not make them run screaming in the other direction from angry keyboard warriors.
When you’re hard gardening, you’re too busy to blog and when you aren’t, there’s not much gardening to blog about.
Again I haven’t posted anything in ages, which means I’m pretty much a fail as bloggers go. Thank the gods I don’t do this for money, all my sponsors would desert me.
My original idea for Dirt was to share projects I’m working on in the yard or garden. I was pretty good for a couple years about taking pictures and even writing down brief notes on what I was doing or how I did it so I could share later. We had 40 acres, but I only actually paid attention to about 3-5 of it, because the rest was steep wooded hills and valleys only accessible by hiking. My vegetable garden was the size of a postage stamp, our functional yard was not much bigger.
… then we moved HERE. Suddenly I have 40 acres that is almost all accessible by ATV, if not my regular vehicle. The garden is now “holy hell what do I fill all this space with sized”, there are hayfields, a pond and 5? outbuildings that all need some sort of attention. And ya’ll, I have freaking COWS. And we’re talking about getting MORE.
So in the 4 years we’ve been here, I’ve done a TON of stuff, but not much of it is all that garden blog worthy. And when there is something blog worthy, I’m often too busy doing the thing to consider blogging about it.
This is why I started adding crafting and painting projects- so my poor, neglected site isn’t just left to die.
I did take a picture of the pumpkins I grew this year and our dogs finding the only bit of shade in the garden while they waited on me to finish picking tomatoes.
Maybe when my daughter is grown, the outbuildings are finally organized and I’ve turned the front trailer into a She-shed- I’ll have time to really dedicate to blog. That’s probably a well intentioned lie though. By then, we may have decided we need to go off grid and have a full on hobby farm or something. I’ll be building windmills and not posting about how I built them.
At least you know I’m living my best life. 🙂
I’ll get something on here this fall/winter, even if it’s just remodels and painting projects. Until then. 🙂
Belle of Dirt 