The Weekly Weeder: Natural Weed Control

Notice the old leaves under the rose, and the 4 x 8 sand paths.

            Weeds are taking over neglected portions of our cities and countryside, making them ugly, disorderly and unsafe.  Flowering weeds are often ugly, always disorderly, and once they dry out, they are a fire hazard.  If not killed before going to seed, they spread themselves around; they are a nuisance that multiplies.  Whole city subdivisions have burned in recent decades, and some small towns as well. When weed codes are well enforced and properties are watered, cities don’t burn. 

          The most dangerous weeds are annuals and biennials that seed and dry out in a season.  They make many seeds, some of which can last for years in soil before they sprout or rot.  But their roots don’t need to be pulled to kill them.  All their top growth comes from their crowns, the part of the plant between the roots and the stems.  Cut them under their crowns or pull them when they are flowering before they go to seed and they are gone, but it can take years to control the seeds already in the ground

          You can cut them under their crowns with scissors or a knife, which is great for going after individual weeds, but is relatively slow.  Still, this is the best way to handle seeded puncture vine, a noxious weed that pops bike tires as well as sticking shoes and bare feet.  Cutting under crowns or pulling are the only ways to take weeds out selectively in lawns, beds and borders.

          You can also beat the crowns out of the soil wholesale with a string trimmer.  This works best when the plants are young and not yet seeded, and the soil is relatively soft.  It has to be repeated to catch newly sprouted annuals and re-growing perennials.  Done often and long enough, it can kill out perennials as well.  It is rather messy.  A hula hoe (AKA scuffle hoe and stirrup hoe) doesn’t throw stuff around.

          You can mulch with leaves, compost, wood chips or bark to smother small plants and stop seeds from sprouting.  Most very small seeds need a touch of sunlight to sprout, and nearly every newly sprouted plant can be easily smothered with 2 inches or more of dense mulch.  Avoid fine bark and bagged bark with fines; bark’s natural preservatives leach downward and kill soil life, but not plants. Larger barks do not kill soil, but ¾” bark and walk-on fir are dense enough at 2” deep.  Walk-on fir bark is most effective at staying put; ¾” floats away on slopes.

          Leaves are the most effective mulch, though some tend to blow around.  Leaves that last for a year, like oak and red maple, are most effective.  They dry quickly on the surface and make a lousy seed bed for whatever falls on them.  Leaves and compost also feed soil life, which makes the soil soft for pulling weeds and provides habitat for good (predator) bugs.

          Perennial weeds like blackberries can also be fire hazards and nuisances.  Cutting under or pulling their crowns is effective, but birds drop seeds in their droppings.  When it comes to weeding, constant vigilance and watering is the key.

 

Revised 12/10/2024.  Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com

           

          Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

The Natural Gardener: Aphids on Roses are Good

          A couple of weeks ago, I saw a bad infestation of aphids on Betty Boop, my favorite rose.  I also saw some soldier beetles already on the job, eating them.  I checked them a few days later, and both aphids and soldier beetles were gone.

But I know that those soldier beetles laid eggs under the leaf mulch in my beds, and their larvae will be patrolling under that mulch for the next 10-11 months, eating any insects they can catch and kill.  They pupate and become adults in April and May and emerge, ravenous for aphids to make their eggs.

I learned this the spring after I bought my house, in 2000.  All the roses that came with the property were heavily infested with aphids, and I waited for weeks for lady beetles to show up and clean them up and make their young, who likewise eat aphids.  But the infestation just got worse, until I got nervous and decided to spray them with soap.  I was heading out there with the spray bottle in hand, when I saw about 50 soldier beetles flying around the most infested bush and mating—so I didn’t spray but I did look up these red and black beetles and learned their habits.  Within a few days, both aphids and soldier beetles were gone.

I had been waiting for lady beetles because, in Arizona, I had a single broccoli plant that was infested with aphids.  I had learned that aphids are specific for particular types of plants.  This being the only brassica in my garden, I knew there was nothing else that they would eat, so I didn’t pull the plant, wanting its seeds.  After a while, it became a lady beetle factory, feeding at least 100 of a several different sizes and colors of lady beetles, including young and pupae.

But here in Southern Oregon, lady beetles have to compete with soldier beetles, which, with their short adult life span, are more ravenous when they emerge from the mulch.
Later in the summer, I tend to have aphids on corn, which attract lady beetles in large numbers and don’t really hurt the corn.  They also do the same thing on sun flowers, though birds are more likely to eat them there.  A couple of years, I had large, grey aphids on my fringe pussy willows, which were eaten by hummingbirds, chickadees and woodpeckers.

Aphids are manna for predators that eat them, crowding together in large numbers for easy picking, full of sugar as well as protein.  Those that grow on poisonous plants, like hellebores, often are not eaten by anything.   I have seen soldier beetles eating aphids on hellebores, but only once, so I am more likely to spray them there.  But most of the time, they are useful to bring in predators that might stick around and eat other insects as well. 

But soldier beetles won’t lay eggs where there isn’t any mulch cover for their young.  Don’t use finely-ground bark, which leaches its natural preservatives into soil and kills everything in the soil but plants.  Coarse bark, like walk-on fir or nugget bark, can provide shelter and help keep soil moist, but the best garden mulch is leaves, which feed fungi and soil life and become rich soil.

         

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

The Natural Gardener: February Gardening

          February in Grants Pass is when the garden and the gardener really start to wake up.  January has its snowdrops, but we don’t really care; it is too cold and dreary to draw us outside.  In February, sunny days get warm enough to make cold weather gear too warm by afternoon, and coax crocuses and daffodils to bloom.

Daffodils in oak leaf mulch for weed control.

February is the time to kill annual springweeds like bitter cress, heron’s bill, groundsel, foxtail and cheat before they bloom and spread; it has been since October, when they started to grow and some started to bloom.  Cut any annual weed under the crown and it will be gone; you can clear a lot of them quickly with gardening scissors or a knife. 

Winter is also time to cut and dig rampant perennials like violets that are in stasis until this month, when they will start to bloom in earnest, set seed and make the matter more urgent.  Cut blackberries back and dig out their crowns.  Dig excess raspberries, transplant them, and prune out dead canes.  You still have time to transplant trees, shrubs and perennials while roots grow before spring top growth begins.  Winter is the best time to do heavy tree pruning with a saw, but lopper work is better done in midsummer.  "Crown" your roses when their buds start to grow, cutting them to the hard crown at the base to stop black spot until fall.

It is also time to start new gardening beds with compost, edging the beds with 6-12” boulders, choosing rocks with flat bottoms from the pile at Copeland.  Leaves can be used in the fall, several inches to a foot thick.  But new beds can be started at any time of year with compost.  One can build compost beds in the heat of summer for summer vegetables and fall perennials, or in the depths of winter for winter and spring planting.  Two inches is good for ornamentals, but six inches will give them a better start and grow great vegetables. 

Compost needs to be covered with coarse mulch like walk-on fir or nugget bark to protect it, roots and seedlings from rain, wind, and drying sun.  Avoid using fine bark, which kills soil with its natural preservatives. 

Blueberries and azaleas don’t even like to be planted into plain soil; they do better set on top of the ground and surrounded by compost covering their roots; their fine, spongy roots will sink into the soil as the compost is worked in by worms.  The more general rule is that #1 pots and larger need to be planted in soil, or they will be left high and dry as the compost is worked in and rots, while 4” and smaller pots will sink into soil with the compost.

          Paths need to be controlled too.  Two inches of wood chips, walk-on fir or ¾ inch nugget bark, will stop most weeds for a season, but need to be refreshed yearly.  4 x 8 sand, ¼-1/8 inch sifted river sand available at Copeland, laid one inch deep, covers mud and makes it easy to hula-hoe and rake young weeds as the sand brings them up.  (It also is good for starting a lawn and covering its mud.)  It is also easy to clean 4 x 8 sand by blowing and raking the tree trash into the beds for mulch.  Some trees, like mimosa, demand it, as they drop sticky flowers half the summer, leaves in the fall, and seed pods all winter, none of which are easy to clean off bark or chips.

         

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

The Weekly Weeder -- Wild lettuce: Ugliest Weed Ever

          Prickly lettuce is one of the ugliest weeds ever when blooming, and it has started to bloom all over town.  As it bolts, its leaves stick out at unnatural angles, edges vertical, showing off its sharp points.  It grows 3-7 feet tall and spreads out at the top into wide, branching panicle of tiny yellow flowers that soon turn to small, fluffy seeds that fly on the wind to other properties.  It grows all over town, particularly on the neglected edges outside fences, and in cracks in the pavements.  It gets its name from the prickles on the base of its stem which pierce the bare hand that tries to pull it.  It screams seediness and neglect.

Young prickly lettuce

This looks like a domestic-wild hybrid of prickly lettuce

          There are many varieties of wild lettuce.  They all have a few traits in common, starting with being a composite flower (many tiny flowers in a each bloom, often with yellow strap petal flowers around the edges of the bloom, but some have all strap petal flowers and others have no petals) with seeds that fly on the wind, much like their short perennial relative, dandelion.  Unlike dandelion, the flowers grow on branching stems that can vary from a few inches to 18” tall in the case of groundsel in the spring, to 6 feet or more in summer with prickly lettuce and cow thistle, which looks much like a thistle with lettuce flowers but is not as spiny as true thistles.  Some wild lettuce mixes with domestic lettuce, creating interesting red shades.

"Soft" wild lettuce

False dandelion, which has been blooming knee-high in yards with dandelion-size flowers, is a wild lettuce.  This year, we have a new tiny, fine variety, half the regular size with half-inch yellow flowers, which has spread widely in the area and pulls rather easily.  We also have a soft, tall-growing variety with very dandelion-like leaves, with long, vertical branches on the stems that easily bend and buckle because the stems are soft and hollow.  Look up wild lettuce varieties on the internet, and you’ll see several more that grow in our woods, at least one of which is actually pretty, but still spreads like a weed.

          Unlike dandelion, they have tap roots usually only a few inches long that do not grow if cut an inch below the top of the root crown, being mostly annual weeds, though false dandelion is perennial and still dies.  They often pull out of the ground easily, but can be cut out if they break off above the crown. 

          If you weed them out of your yard and they keep appearing, there is an infestation within a half-block.  Wind-blown seeds don’t usually fly very far in a city full of trees.

          Also unlike dandelion, these weeds need no summer water to sprout and grow and tend to invade dry lawns, vacant lots, and cracks in pavements.  But they will sprout throughout the year with water as well.  What they need is bare soil or fine-textured mulch to get a touch of sun and hold the water needed to germinate their seeds. 

Whole-leaf mulch dries out on top quickly.  It deprives lettuce seeds in the soil of that touch of sun and those that fall on top of the leaves of the fine-textured seed bed that holds the moisture needed to sprout and grow.  A few layers of soft leaves will stop spring weeds like groundsel before they are eaten by soil life.  A couple inches of harder leaves will stop most weed seeds, and soften the soil to pull the ones that grow, while encouraging big-seeded perennial grasses to take over.  Bigger-seeded annual grasses will also grow through the leaves and need to be weeded out.  They are a softer, lighter green than the perennial grasses; see “cheat” and “foxtails.”

                               

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Weekly Weeder: Stop Crab Grass in your lawn

Baby crab grass in bare dirt

          Summer is here, and crab grass is sprouting in lawns, very thick in some.  It’s past time to mulch your lawn, but not too late to smother a lot of it.

Last year, I started mulching crab grass in Dad’s lawn when it started sprouting, which was a bit late for the amount of mulch I was using, an inch of compost.  Sprouting crab grass is very small, and can be hard to see before it gets big enough to grow out of the mulch.  Not that the effort was wasted; the compost still stopped a lot of crab grass, and the lawn is looking much healthier and greener than last spring, without moss under the tree.

Young crab grass, spreading from its crown

Lawn grasses can readily grow through an inch or more of compost and will be much happier for it.  If your grass is perennial rye, a clumping grass, it’s a good time to seed more rye into the compost where it is patchy.  Mulching leaves into the lawn over the fall and winter with the lawn mower will help smother small-seeded grasses like crab grass and Bermuda.

            Crab grass is a clumping relative of Bermuda grass that also roots along its stems, but it’s tender, and dies with the first frost.  It is a tender perennial, as it does not die from making seed, but only spreads and makes more seed until it freezes.  It roots deeply where it is well watered, and hardly roots at all where it is not watered well, living on dust and dew collected on its hairy leaves. 

This young, mature crab grass appears to be growing in well-mowed Bermuda.

Bermuda grows rhizomes that can travel under sidewalks and go 18” deep and goes dormant about 6 months of the year in Oregon, making it a lawn weed in this area, not good grass.   Bermuda and crab grass show their family relationship in the shape of their seed stalks, and the size of their seed, which is, thankfully, small and easily smothered with mulch.  So the same mulching that stops crab grass can also prevent Bermuda from germinating.

Ironically, in Arizona, where they use Bermuda as lawn grass, they mulch their lawns with steer manure every spring, which keeps them thick and green in the summer heat, and crab grass is rare.  Here in southern Oregon, I don’t recall seeing anyone else using steer manure or other compost on their lawns, and crab grass has spread all over town and down our country roads in the last 20 years.  Chemical fertilizers don’t smother weed seeds, and crab grass has no problem with dryness or low fertility.

Green crab grass with dry foxtails and cheat

Even if you mulch, it is unlikely that you will stop all the crab grass in your lawn, since the seed is everywhere.  Unlike annual grasses, the roots of crab grass are tough and wiry, and where they go deep, it is nearly impossible to pull after it flowers.  But it can be cut off its roots with garden scissors or a knife, and it won’t grow back, as it has no food in those wiry roots.

It doesn't pay to spray crab grass with Roundup (glyphosate salts), even in gravel and bare dirt.  It kills the plant, but fertilizes the seed in the soil; it comes back greener every time.

Revised June 2016, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com with photos. Follow Rycke or subscribe.

Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  Like Garden Grants Pass on Facebook.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener        541-955-9040      rycke@gardener.com

Grow Bigger Tomato and Pepper Plants

Tomato in leaves covered with pine needles and "gabion" river rocks

Tomato plants start appearing in the markets in April, usually large, blooming plants in 6” pots first.  They are there to tempt the ignorant into planting too big, too old, and too early.  If the soil is not warm enough, they just sit and get eaten by bugs until it warms up to 70 degrees.  If that happens, replant when it is warmer.

The first step to growing a big tomato or pepper plant is to buy a small one that is not yet blooming or even budding.  Examine the tips carefully for buds.  Buds or blooms on a plant in a pot are a sign that it is root bound and has moved from growing mode to trying to make seed while it still can. 

It is getting harder to find good tomatoes and pepper plants in the markets.  You can take a budding plant and cut the roots down each side of the root ball to make them grow into the soil.  You can pinch off the flowers and fruit until the plants are a good two feet tall and get excellent results thereafter.

Peppers planted in gabion rocks. 

It pays to wait until June for peppers.  They prefer warmer soil.  Nights colder than 50 degrees will stunt them.  In recent years, I have had a hard time finding pepper plants even in 4-inch pots that are not showing buds.  4- and 6-packs are scarce.  I’ve started growing my own pepper seeds from store-bought peppers.  The seeds are fresh, sprout easily, and are unlikely to be cross bred, as they are grown in large fields of the same plant.  Tomato seeds must be fermented to sprout, which is why they volunteer so easily in your garden.

Spread compost 4-6 inches deep where you want them to grow unless the soil there is already rich.  If you spread 6-12 inches of leaves on the soil in the fall, an inch of compost will help warm and rot the leaves and the plants will root in the rotting leaves. Afternoon shade is good for tomatoes; peppers want full sun.  Crowding pepper plants about a foot apart can protect their fruit from sunburn, as the leaves form a canopy. 

Tomato in leaves with large rocks for warmth, maybe two weeks after planting. 

The sand in the foreground is the path cover.

Plant your starts into compost or soil no deeper than they were in their pots.  There is no need to cover the lower stem on root-bound plants to grow more roots.  Doing so just puts them that much deeper into cold soil that will slow their growth and closer to the pill bugs, slugs and snails who will eat them.

Place rounded river rock, AKA "gabion rock," available at Copeland Landscape Supply, around your starts to absorb heat and transfer it to the soil and roots.  They should be easy to pick up with one hand, but thick enough to hold heat well into the night.  Night warmth is critical to good root growth.

One year, I tried small gravel for starting plants in the ground.  We had a cloudburst on a hot afternoon, and my little seedlings boiled.  Warming rocks should be at least an inch thick, preferably two or three inches.

                               

Revised 8-25-23, published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Grow Big Blueberries in Grants Pass

Southern and Northern blueberries at Bimart.  Note the old leaves on the Southern.

Our local stores and nurseries stock two kinds of blueberries.  Northern blueberries have large leaves, thick, stiff stems, and are deciduous; their leaves turn bright red in the fall and then fall off.  Southern Rabbiteye blueberries have thinner, more arching growth, and smaller leaves that turn various colors in winter but are semi-evergreen, holding most of their leaves through the winter in this area.  

South and North together in my garden.  The old leaves on the Southern bush didn't get cold enough to turn color.  Both plants were transplanted a few years ago; the Southern is several years older.

They don’t like to be planted into plain soil, unless it is exceedingly light and rich, like potting soil. Indeed, they grow remarkably well in potting soil in wide, large pots.  Otherwise, rather than planting them in plain dirt, it is better to set the plant on top of the ground and surround it with enough compost to surround and cover the roots, if your plant is in a #1 (6”) or smaller pot.  Young blueberries grow a sponge of roots only 4-6 inches deep in their pots, putting down a deep taproot only after 4-5 years.  Six inches of compost makes rich, light soil after worms work it in..

Unlike most other shrubs and perennials, blueberries at this size will sink into the soil as the compost is worked in by worms; most other 6” potted plants will sit on top of the soil as the compost is worked in and are left high and dry.  If your plant is in a larger pot, dig a shallow dish hole, break up the soil below and around the hole, and then surround it with a level area of compost to just cover its roots.  Having level compost is vital; a rounded mound will shed water and be dry. Blueberries love their water.

Cover that compost with coarse mulch like ¾” nugget bark, walk-on fir bark, or pine needles or straw, to keep it from drying out and keep the roots cool and moist.  An evergreen ground cover like creeping jenny or clover can keep them cool as the mulch disappears.  Two inches of soft leaves in the fall are probably the best mulch to maintain organic matter in the soil, but I like to scatter our copious coffee and tea grounds into the mulch or ground cover after the leaves are eaten.  It is vital to not let the compost be exposed to sun; they like their roots cool.  Bark protects soil when the leaves have been eaten by worms.

A standing mister. These put out a finer mist than emitters bought to attach to irrigation line.

          Southern Oregon has hot, dry summers, not the best conditions for growing blueberries, which like their heads in the sun and their roots cool and moist, but don’t like a lot of heat or dryness at any time.  Most garden plants prefer a little less heat and a lot more humidity than we have in Grants Pass. 

            Fast growth and big berries on young plants can be achieved by keeping misters running nearby through the heat of the summer days.  Leaving them on at night spreads moisture a lot farther.  Misters help many plants grow over a wide area of the garden.  Misting with well water can mineralize the soil, reducing acidity; humic acid or worm castings can counter that.  

An incident shows how vital misting is here.  A customer forgot to turn on one mister for a week near an isolated plant that had just started producing big, tasty berries.  The remaining berries all stopped growing and immediately ripened, producing little berries that were not juicy or flavorful.

                               

Revised August 2023, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.  Like Garden Grants Pass on Facebook.

Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  Litter is tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Grow Big Blueberries in Southern Oregon

We are coming into the season for buying young blueberry plants in the market or by mail, though the prime planting season in our area is late fall.  Still, you can plant them into the ground in the spring and expect them to grow well if you provide the right conditions.   

You can also plant a #1potted plant or mail-order bare root into a larger pot and let them grow twice as large over the summer before planting in the fall.  BiMart has #1 potted blueberries in the spring, some of which are Southern Rabbiteye, which are semi-evergreen, turn colors in the winter, and take our hot summers better than Northern varieties, but they don’t tell you which are which.  OneGreenWorld.com is a nursery near Molalla that sells both Southern and Northern varieties, where you can find out which ones are Southern varieties online.  Buying local is always better if they are available, as you’ll get larger plants at a lower price.

          They don’t like to be planted into plain soil, unless it is exceedingly light and rich, like potting soil.  Rather than planting them in the ground, it is better to set the plant on top of the ground and surround it with enough compost to surround and cover the roots.  Young blueberries grow a sponge of roots only 4-6 inches deep in their pots, putting down a deep taproot only after 4-5 years.  Four to six inches is a great depth for spreading compost to make rich, light soil after it is worked in by worms.  Unlike other shrubs and perennials, blueberries roots will sink into the soil as the compost is worked in by worms; other potted plants will sit on top of the soil as the compost is worked in, and be left high and dry.

          Cover that compost with coarse mulch like ¾” nugget bark, walk-on fir, or pine needles, to keep it from drying out and keep the roots cool and moist.  2 inches of leaves in the fall are probably the best mulch to maintain organic matter in the soil, but I like to scatter our copious coffee and tea grounds into the bark after the leaves are eaten.  It is vital to not let the soil be exposed to sun.  Bark protects it when the leaves have been pulled into the soil.

Southern Oregon has hot, dry summers, not the best conditions for growing blueberries, which like their heads in the sun and their roots cool and moist, but don’t like a lot of heat or dryness.  Indeed, most garden plants prefer a little less heat and a lot more humidity than we have here. 

          The key to getting fast growth and big berries is keeping a mister running nearby through the heat of the summer, particularly from blooming to after harvest.  24/7 is best, as it simulates coastal fog.  It does not cause fungal infections, and helps plants grow over a wide area of the garden.

Last year, an incident showed how vital this is.  A customer turned off one mister for a week near an isolated plant that had been producing big, tasty berries.  The remaining berries all stopped growing and immediately ripened, producing little berries that were not juicy and flavorful.      

                               

February 2015 issue, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th

Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  Litter is tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Don’t till; mulch and plant in it

 Late spring, tomato planted in leaves with rocks for warmth; pepper foreground, planted in leaves, compost and 4 x 8 top mulch with rocks for more warmth and predator shelter; 4 x 8 path between 

This is the season when people start thinking about tilling their vegetable garden areas, but it is too wet to work the soil.  It’s a good time to start building mulch beds that you can immediately plant seeds and starts in.  You can do this anywhere you grow other plants as well; vegetables don’t need to grow in their own mini-farm in your yard; they just need good sun.  They can be worked into your landscape.

          Another good reason to mulch rather than tilling in compost is that tilling brings weed seeds to the surface where they can grow; kills many earthworms and soil predators; and mixes air into the soil that decomposes organic matter faster, causing nutrient loss from leaching and evaporation.  Letting worms work in nutritious mulch captures its nutrients in worm castings that release nutrients slowly and have lighter, better texture than uneaten soil, while coarse top mulch provides a home for predators like ground beetles, centipedes, and soldier beetles while protecting soil.

Fall: a compost pile of layered leaves and garden plants, about 2 feet high, built for growing watermelons, a small yellow Red Hot Poker on one side, a large growing area behind, about 8" deep in leaves.

 February: the pile has settled about 6 inches.

February: compost is added to speed decomposition.  The compost will be covered with 4 x 8 sand before planting the watermelons, with large rocks in the center to plant the seeds around.  Naked leaves will keep weed seeds from landing and sprouting around the watermelons.

        You can build beds with leaves, mainly available in the fall, a foot of which will grow huge vegetables.  For winter vegetables and small seeds, you can put an inch of compost on top, covered with an inch of coarse mulch like pine needles or shredded or nugget.  Scatter small seeds on the surface and plant starts and large seeds into the leaves.  Compost keeps the leaves wet and provides nutrients to help them rot faster; coarse mulch keeps it from drying out.  You can plant summer starts and large seeds into leaves alone for best weed control, as dry surface leaves make a poor seed bed for weeds.  This is just one reason why leaves make the best mulch for maintenance.

A potato popping up in February

          Leaves being not so available in spring, you can build beds with straight compost.  Six inches is equivalent to a foot of leaves and is ready to grow plants right away.  Two inches is good for ornamental shrubs and flowers.  This compost also needs to be protected from sun by coarse mulch, which is also needed for shelter by predators that keep pests under control.

          Paths also have to be mulched, to keep weeds from growing.  Like the beds, weeds have to be pulled when they grow anyways.  2 inches of coarse mulch like wood chips, chipped trimmings, or coarse bark can keep weeds down for a year and has to be renewed yearly.  An inch of 4 x 8 sand, river sand sifted to 1/4-1/8 inch, can be weeded with a hula hoe (AKA stirrup  hoe or scuffle hoe) when the weeds are small, and the weeds raked up, saving bending for each weed.  It is cleaner than organic mulch paths, easily blowing clean, while raking sifts dirt to below the sand.  It's also good for mulching over compost, heating the soil for fast growth.

          Beds made of leaves or mulch will spread into the paths from feet and birds and squirrels seeking food unless they are edged with something solid.  Cobble rock about 6 inches high, can be laid in curving lines for beauty and smooth lines of travel, end to end.  Brick can be used, but is more exacting to lay.  Wood lends itself only to straight lines and eventually falls apart.

February 2015 issue, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th

Follow @AnRycke on Twitter; GP Gardener on Facebook; check out GPgardener.com for blogs

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Leave leaves on your lawn

Just enough leaves on a lawn to stop weeds but not good grass

People are way too afraid of leaves on lawns.  Perennial grass is stronger than you might think.  A pile of leaves will leave a hole in a lawn.  Two inches or more will allow grass to grow through only here and there.  But a few layers will not stop perennial grasses from jumping right up in the spring.  They have enough food in their roots to push through light layers of leaves.  Leaves keep the soil warmer than no leaves and make it more fertile as the worms eat them through the winter, so grasses grow stronger in the spring.

Leaves not only feed soil and keep it warmer to grow grass better, but they stop small seeds like crabgrass; annual rye; Bermuda grass, nut sedge; dandelions; wild lettuce; and groundsel, the first of the wind-blown weeds to bloom in the spring, by keeping sun off the soil.  They also stop mosses, which like these weeds, need sun on bare soil to germinate.  Large annual grass seeds, like cheat and foxtails, can push through a few layers of leaves and need to be pulled.  You can tell them from perennial grass sprouts by their color, which is a lighter green with wider blades than perennial grass, or by their seed stalks later in the spring.  Crab grass, which sprouts in late spring, are very fat even when very short, and are best pulled small.

The weakest perennial grass is probably perennial rye sod, which most lawns on new construction are built with.  It is not a true sod grass; it is a clumping grass held together by plastic net.  Its roots are short for cutting off its clay soil base and transplanting, so it only lasts about 5 years before being invaded by stronger grasses.  Clumping grasses don’t spread by rhizomes, underground stems, but depend on reseeding to refill bare spots that form when clumps die, so it pays to reseed it in the fall before allowing leaves to cover, or rake it into the leaves in spring.  Its seeds are large enough to push through a few layers of leaves when they are ready to grow.  Perennial rye seed grows deeper roots than rye sod, and can create a stronger lawn as the sod grass dies out if it is reseeded yearly. 

Perennial grasses prefer to grow longer north of California, as the sun is lower and they need to be taller to catch the sunlight.  Two inches tall is good in summer, but 3-4 inches is better in winter.  Not cutting grass too short in summer or winter also helps keep sun off soil to prevent weeds and moss. 

A mulching mower can break up the leaves and help them to lie heavy enough between the grasses to keep small weed seeds from sprouting, but whole leaves will not stop the good grass from growing from roots or seed if they are not too thick.

Use leaves to stop weeds

Oak leaves covered with pine needles to keep them in place

Leaves are starting to fall, and they are way too useful to just rake up and put on the curb for pickup.  It’s also a lot of work to rake them out of your shrubbery and flower beds.  Leaves are natural mulch that feed soil and stop weeds, and the thicker they lie, the better they do it.  A foot of mixed leaves can grow great vegetables. They belong on bare soil and mulched beds. 

Leaves laid thick for growing vegetables

Leaves need to be removed from buildings, pavements and paths.   They should not lie too thick on lawns, where they can smother grass, but even there, they can suppress crab grass and other small seeds, while stronger perennial grasses like fine and tall fescues, can grow right through several inches as the soil warms in the spring; they are encouraged by the fertility.  Larger annual grasses, like cheat and fox tails, need a good two inches to stop them.
Most small seeds need a touch of sunlight to allow them to germinate, lest they sprout too deep and are unable to grow out from under their cover.  The larger the seed, the more food it has to grow through soil or leaf cover.  But the smaller the seeds, the more there are to sprout.  Once larger seeds have sprouted, it can be easier to smother them with mulch, if they are covered before they put a lot of food in their roots.

Naturally fallen Red Maple leaves stopping bitter cress and annual rye

Leaves vary in their ability to stop weeds from sprouting.  Very soft light leaves, like box elder, can be eaten by worms, pill bugs, earwigs, and other detritus eaters before fall is even over, and are good for feeding soil, but are fairly useless for stopping weeds in the spring.  Not-so-soft leaves, like red maple, will make it through the winter and stop early spring weeds like groundsel and bitter cress.  Tougher leaves, like oak, sweet gum, and magnolia, stick around all summer, and prevent the germination of later-flying wild lettuce and dandelions and tracked-in crab grass.

Non-broadleaf evergreens also vary in their ability to stop weeds.  Pine needles and needle-type true cedars are tough and take a long time to decompose, but their shape allows seeds to grow through unless they are over an inch thick.  Flatter evergreens, like fir and local cedars, decompose more quickly, but seem to stop weeds fairly well anyways.

One kind of soft leaf can stop weed seeds smaller than a maple nut all summer, even after they are gone: black walnut.  They have juglone, a natural pre-emergent herbicide.  They are not a problem for established perennials, but they stop smaller seeds even after the soil is bare.  Spread under a tree where birds perch, they can stop blackberries and other berry seeds from sprouting where they are laid at least an inch deep.

Use leaves; don’t lose them.  They can save you a lot of work.

October issue, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com, sold at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th St. 

Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  Litter is tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener                 541-955-9040                 rycke@gardener.com

Good mulch brings good bugs

Leaves under butternut squash and tomatoes

A gentleman of my acquaintance asked me what to do about squash bugs.  I said that I never really have a problem with squash bugs.  Turns out that the people he is helping with their farm are using plastic mulch to control weeds and row covers to try to control insect pests. 

I pointed out that what controls bad bugs are good bugs, predators that eat the plant eaters, and the most effective ones require good mulch like leaves to live under.  When you have plastic mulch or bare soil, you lose all the spiders, centipedes, ground beetles, and soldier beetles, to name a few of the most effective predators in the garden.

Warming rocks under peppers.  They warm the soil at night, cool it during the day.

Almost all of these predators live exclusively under loose mulch and rocks.  Soldier beetles spend the spring month of their adult lives flying, eating aphids, mating, and laying their eggs under mulch, where their larvae live under the mulch the remaining 11 months of the year, eating anything they can catch and kill.  If you have no loose organic mulch, you will have no soldier beetles laying eggs, and few or none of the others.

He said that the plastic mulch is needed to keep weeds down.  I said that leaves do that.  Not only do they keep sun off the seeds that need light to sprout, but they are a poor sprouting surface, as they dry out quickly, so seeds that land on top cannot sprout either.  Only larger seeds can get through 2 inches of leaves, and they are easily pulled; it is the tiny seeds that need sunlight on soil that are hardest to control without mulch.

4x8 sand and rocks under peppers and melons.  Insects are not under sand, only under rocks.  Sand is too hot.  Walk-on fir bark is beyond.

Plastic mulch cannot feed soil, while leaves are the natural food of worms and other detritus eaters, who turn them into soil.  One eater of detritus is the earwig, which many think of as a pest.  They are rather creepy in their habit of hiding in flowers and foliage during the day and coming out when they are brought into the house, but they don’t generally eat live plants; they eat the fungus out of dead or living leaves and can actually eat fungus, like rust on hollyhocks, out of your plants. 

Wikipedia considers earwigs omnivorous and says that they eat insects and plants.  Scientists seem to have missed that they love the fungus-infected parts of leaves.  They are said to eat corn silks as well, but I always have many earwigs and no corn silk damage.  Without fungus-ridden rotting leaves to eat, earwigs have only the softer parts of live plants to eat.

Two inches of leaves is great for stopping weeds and feeding soil.  12 inches or more can make wonderful soil and grow huge plants as they decompose.  Start next year’s garden by gathering your leaves this fall, rather than giving them to the trash company for compost.  They will make wonderful compost in your garden if you just let them lie there, and add to them.