If you are always waiting for a sunny day so you can get out and work in your garden, then you probably aren’t going to have much of a garden.
The best days to work in a garden are cloudy days, after a good soaking rain, when it is cool out and looks like it could start raining again any minute.
Today was one of those “best days” to work in the garden and I made good headway on weeding.
Just in time, as you can see from this picture. There were plenty of dandelions like this one that had already set seed. Nice of me to wait to pull them until they had set seed, wasn’t it?
I like to make it a fair fight between me and the weeds. If I don’t give them a chance to set seed or grow really deep roots, it is hardly fair, is it?
On my side, I have lots of hoes and hand weeders and knowledge and some power.
What do the weeds have, other than a sense of survival?
And they seem to be surviving quite nicely in my garden.
Until today.
I didn’t sit around and wait to see if it would rain today. No siree! I went out and pulled weeds, filling a bushel basket oodles of times as I made my way around the garden. I embraced weeding.
Of course, I left the weediest section of the garden for later. I always do, so it is getting worse by the day. I’m embarrassed to even show a picture…
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Hey, are you one of those gardeners who likes to know the names of all the weeds in your garden?
If you are, can you tell me the name of this weed?
I pulled quite a bit of it today, and since I have so much of it, I thought it would be nice if we were on a first name basis.
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But today didn’t just belong to the weeds!
I also pulled some radishes from the garden.
They looked better once I cleaned them up, but after they were all cleaned up, they weren’t around long enough for me to take a picture.
Yum, they were good!
I let the weeds flower so I can figure out which kind they are! I’m okay with working outside on a cloudy day, but on days like we had here today — 45 degrees, pouring rain, and high wind — there’s not a chance I’m going out there.
It looks like a wild geranium to me.
A nice radish sandwich to fortify you for more weed pulling. You shall overcome with all that knowledge and with the hoe army to back you up.
I don’t know what that weed is but I have some in my garden too.
What is frost? I have noticed it tends to grow when the temperature falls below 32? I have been told that frost is “frozen water vapor” that forms when something is below the dew point of the surrounding air. But who understands what the dew point is anyway? I don’t. It is probably some commie term used to confuse everyone.
I have been told that frost is like snow flakes in that their crystal size can differ—and some people tell me there are different types of frost, such as radiation and window frost.
Some geek from Indiana University told me that frost is made up little tiny spicules of ice which can grow! And frost does have preferences. It likes to grow on the heads of rusty nails for example. And in Brown County I have seen it grow in the cracks of wooden sidewalks.
So I think frost is a plant. Am I right?
I let my weeds flower too, unless there are too many growing. My favorite weeding times are in the morning or evening after a rain. I wait until the tops are dried off and just start pulling. It usually works well for me. Thistles aren’t removed by hand though.
Carol, looks like a geranium to me too.
Two nice things about a garden in the shade: fewer weeds, and working in the shade during the heat of summer. It’s a bit too chilly out there right now though, so thank goodness I have no weeding I have to do! Most of the ‘weeds’ in my garden are tree seedlings. There used to be none when DH used preen, but since I nixed that, there are lots of maple, buckthorn, and mulberry seedlings to pull. The helicopters are flying now, and I’m sure there’ll be another bumper crop of maple seedlings to pull soon.
A shady day just after a rain is just about the perfect time to weed. Here at clay and limestone it’s also a good time to get bitten by our happy little mosquitoes. We have had so much rain the mosquitoes are everywhere. It’s too soon to be summer!
I think that pretty weed in Carolina geranium…does it have a tiny pink flower?
Gail
Funny how some of those weeds manage to hide until they flower! I pulled an almost 18 inch tall dandelion from one bed this morning! Of course it had flowered too…
The weeds are out of control here! I hope to get out tomorrow and do some weeding. I guess I’m still a southern sissy, it was just a bit too cool and rainy for me today. I’m ready for some sunshine.
It looks like a geranium, but it isn’t. I’ve let it flower to test it, and the growth pattern comes from a center rosette. I hate that weed.~~Dee
There’s a photo of the carolinium at the USDA plants page. I see one that looks similar here. I used to love the wild Geranium maculatum in my Illinois woodland borders.
Embrace the weeding – yeah, Carol! That’s what I’ve been doing since I got back! I might be able to enjoy reading many of the posts everyone has made while I was out of town ….but no way can I ever catch up with the commenting!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
I’m with the wild Geranium faction. Let it bloom & see if that’s what it is. If it is, I’d leave a few. (Of course I have 5 species of Geraniums, and probably over a dozen plants of Geranium maculatum, so I’m a little biased in favor of them.)
I agree with you–and I usually like working in rainy days! It’s nice for planting things, too, as it’s easier on the plants during the transplant, and Mother Nature waters them for you. I like it when she does some of the work for me. 🙂
My weeding plan is to spend one hour first thing in the morning weeding – of course, that my PLAN – not what I do! But tomorrow I’m planning on weeding – sure hope it’s cloudy!