Now to be fair, the solarization did actually kill the regular grass that was in the garden, but little else. I am now resorting to the nuclear option....weed b gone. Which also means, that the only veggies we will be growing this year will be container grown.
This is how the garden looks eight days after spraying. I even had to get special weedkiller for the clover and chickweed. After a quick raking out of the dead material, we are going to try solarization again, using black plastic this time. The hubby takes great pleasure in letting me know we should have used that in the first place. I still think the clear could have worked, under the right conditions.
Now for the good news. I have mulch around the entire house for the first time in at least two years! And it looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. My two guys did the majority of the rose bed and I did the rest of the way around the house. Much smaller beds!
There was even enough mulch to do around the shed, too! As you can tell from these pictures, my Bleeding Hearts have bloomed and are doing quite well. I haven't put the mulch down in the bed on the east end of the house yet. I sprayed for weeds and I'm waiting for that to fully take effect. But I should have plenty of mulch left to finish. I ended up buying 25 of the 3 cubic foot bags of cypress mulch. A lot better than 40 bags of the 2 cubic foot that I used to buy! I have also put plants in all the empty pots that are in these pictures. I'm waiting for a non-rainy day to go around the house taking pictures. I went with a different color scheme this year. I went with a brighter palate --red, yellow, orange and white. Should look good.
I guess you could say the best news of all is Spring is finally here and I'm outside getting to do what I love to do.....GARDEN!
