Sunday, April 13, 2008

Look What I Found Under My Mess

Hola Senor Werm, glad you stayed warm under the Comfrey all winter.

Behind all of the weeds and overgrown, gone to seed broccoli I found Senor Werm and a beautiful spider wort in bloom. Why do beautiful plants sometimes have such awful names?
Here, relaxing under the Duchess De Brabrant, is Miss Trixie taking it easy.
I made it. I did not get lost. I did get sunburned. What did I do with all the broccoli and weeds? Well, I hid them behind the rose bush on the other side of the garden where there are several beds that won't be planted for a few weeks. You see, last summer I found a book among my grandfather's belongings. It was published in the 1950's and was about one woman's struggle to grow a productive vegetable garden. The point of the book was to use mulch. Last fall, I used my pulled weeds and the soft stuff from pruning to mulch my fallow beds. I just dumped them on top of the weeds that were growing in the unplanted beds. After about two weeks I pulled back my "mulch" and the weeds were dead. Better yet, the soil looked awesome. I just cleaned up my weed mulch and removed it to the compost pile. Then I planted my rows and was off. It's not pretty, but it works great. I looked and looked for about 10 seconds for the book so I could give you the title and author. I will actually spend a little time and look for it tomorrow. I am pretty sure it is no longer in print, but maybe you can find it at a used book store.
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