Clearing Out

[winterfirelight]

This past weekend the weather was lovely, so I took on the project of taking out the massive, invasive butterfly bush that was planted by the previous owners. It's been on the to do list for ages, and I'm very happy to have it finally done! We've so much more space now, and we won't have to worry about constant pruning to keep it from growing over the garden path. I thought for sure I was going to have to take up part of the path to dig it out, but somehow the roots were positioned such that it barely disturbed the path at all. I did relocate a number of strawberries and a few bulbs, but I had been planning on moving them anyway, so no loss there. 

I also cleared out dead growth from the square plot and found a lot of new calendula coming up, which is always exciting to see. I'm hopeful that I won't need to plant anything new in that bed, and that everything will have either self-seeded or will come back up on its own as the weather warms. My goal is to have most of the garden full of perennials and self-seeding annuals so I've less to do in terms of planting every year, but there's still lots of space to fill, so it'll be a couple of years yet before that's realized.

And in the backyard, I got the nettle potted up! It would be exciting to see that flourish this summer - safely far away from places people walk, and helpfully contained so as not to cause A Problem. I still want a few more pots out there for other aggressive spreaders - I have lemon balm I need to relocate from the front, and various other seeds in the mint family I'd like to plant without them taking over.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> This past weekend the weather was lovely,<<

We had a hard freeze, howling wind, and a little snow for a while. But today was beautiful. It's supposed to get hot over the next few days thought. :/

>> so I took on the project of taking out the massive, invasive butterfly bush that was planted by the previous owners.<<

Yay! Despite the name, they're less popular than natives. Xerces Society has pages where you can look up what plants in your locale support pollinators.

>>My goal is to have most of the garden full of perennials and self-seeding annuals so I've less to do in terms of planting every year, <<

Excellent plan. Both native species and permaculture are good for that approach.

>> but there's still lots of space to fill, so it'll be a couple of years yet before that's realized.<<

That's actually a good thing. Incremental change reduces the chance of making big mistakes. Add one thing and see how it does, then think about what you still need. If you like permaculture, you can do it one guild at a time. If you favor native species, look at your different microhabitats -- you could do a rain garden, sun garden, shade garden, stumpery, etc.

>> I still want a few more pots out there for other aggressive spreaders <<

Pots are good, but there are other options if you want more space. One is to get a giant tub or kiddie pool, make sure there's drainage in the bottom, then bury it. A more flexible option is to get the kind of deep edging -- at least a foot -- designed to contain running plants. You just pound it in with a mallet.

Re: Thoughts

[winterfirelight]

We also had snow last week, funny enough! It's very odd for our climate. Melted quickly, though, and led into much more pleasant (and normal) weather.

The long-term plan is definitely more natives. I'm sticking with pots in the backyard for now because we're still working out what we want that space to look like in the long run and don't want to do anything more permanent or hard to undo until we've got a better picture. We've got a number of structures back there left behind from the previous owners, which are all big projects to renovate, remove, and/or replace, so the gardening plans have to work around all that potential change in the meantime.

[low_delta]

Good to hear you had Spring last weekend. We had a blizzard, but it looks to be Spring again this weekend.