I am a bit swamped this week, as I am prepping for a fair on Saturday and also trying to get things squared around the house for my parents to come meet their granddaughter.
Our tomatoes are pretty much done for the season, and I think I’m going to have to clip and cure some of our pumpkins in the hoophouse rather than leaving them on the vine. This morning a friend let me take a truck bed’s worth of wild elderberry cuttings for the fair and other fall sales, which was super nice of her.
What’s growing on with you all?
the plan itself isn’t that difficult, just takes a lot of time to kill all the invasive plants off so the native plants have a chance to grow. you completely clear the ground first, let the invasive seeds germinate, kill them again, then seed it with native grasses and plants (prairie moon has a lot of US mixes, so i’ll probably use them). you won’t get blooms for at least two years, i think. and you need to cut everything down to about 1.5 feet the first fall to get the invasive plants before they go to seed. unfortunately, that means you’re also cutting down the plants you want to grow, so they take another year of seeding before things really get going, but they should help keep out the invasives at that point.
Did they talk to you about solarizing next spring using tarps? Given what I know about your rough geography, that might cut down on your time between weed seed germination and die off. In the meantime, check with the pet store you’re a regular at and ask after their pallet slips for your cardboard sourcing. Because their use might be on food bearing pallets, they have stricter rules than other shipping box cardboard and also don’t have flaps to worry about overlapping.
once i actually start doing the work, i definitely will!
they did, but this area of the yard is pretty shady, so the guy leading the workshop specifically recommended using cardboard and mulch for maximum annihilation.