Oh right. I keep forgetting that the reason I don't get anything done outside after mid-August isn't because I'm lazy (though I am), it's because of the damn ragweed. Last weekend I tried to break it up some -- half hour here, 45 minutes there, maybe an hour and a half when I got all distracted by deciding to dig out the lily of the valley. Then I spent the next three days mostly unable to breathe despite the allergy meds. Stupid ragweed.
Speaking of lily of the valley, if I could go back in time and deliver one message to myself, it would be, "Don't change the grade of your yard with the dirt from someone's basement, and don't think that piling inches of dead, mostly clay soil on top of lily of the valley will kill it. It won't. It will only make it stronger." I still love lily of the valley, and I'm delighted with it in the shade garden on the northeast corner of the house. But this had been planted on the south side, where all the sun just gives it entirely too much encouragement. Lily of the valley does not need to be encouraged. This year I noticed how much it was encroaching on my iris and lilies, so I figured I'd pull some out and try to restrain it a bit. HA! Silly me, I went in with a little hand cultivator. Isn't that adorably naive? Twenty minutes and a good sharp shovel later, I was pulling up clumps of lily of the valley roots ten inches deep and so dense there was very little room for soil around them. I know I didn't get it all, but I think I've at least slowed it a little.
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3 comments:
Uhh. I bet the former owner of the dirt feels pretty bad about the affect on your yard. Just guessing.
In what instances would you recommend planting Lilly of the Valley. I'm thinking a transplant from your crop might be able to take on the creeping Charlie over here.
Uhh. I bet the former owner of the dirt feels pretty bad about the effect on your yard. Just guessing.
In what instances would you recommend planting Lilly of the Valley. I'm thinking a transplant from your crop might be able to take on the creeping Charlie over here.
Don't be ridiculous. The former owner of the dirt has no culpability whatsoever! It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, and if I recall correctly, the owner of the dirt even warned me about how it wouldn't be the best for trying to grow things in.
The fact that I know more about soil now than I did then is not the former owner of the dirt's fault in any way.
I would recommend planting lily of the valley any shady place where you want it forever. :-) Underneath windows is nice -- one of my favorite things to do in spring is open up the window and breathe in the lily of the valley scent while I play piano. I don't know whether it would beat up established creeping charlie, but our c.charlie hasn't spread into the lily of the valley area.
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