We had almost three inches of rain in the last two days. The dark weather was bad for my transplants, but the rain and cool weather was wonderful for the bok choi and the lettuce in the garden. I swear they doubled in size in the last two days. Now their leaves are touching and I’ll get to pick some to thin it out in about a week.
Most of my indoor transplants are spending the day outside in the garden under a plastic row cover. This is the place where my tomatoes/eggplant/peppers will go and the ground is covered in black plastic to warm it up more. With the clear plastic row cover over it, it heats up very quickly if there is any sun at all, and keeps the gusty wind from whipping the little plants around. The high today should be in the mid 50s but under the plastic it will probably be in the mid 70s. Of course the best part of getting them outside is the bright sunshine.
The rain also brought out all the dandelions in the lawn. My immediate neighbors don’t put nasty chemicals on their lawn so in the spring yellow blankets our lawns. I know a lot of people hate dandelions, but I think they are another of the beautiful cheery flowers of spring. I first fell in love with dandelions when I was five. We had moved to a new house and below the house next to the road was a break in the trees and a patch of dandelions. They carpeted the whole little area open to the sun. I loved seeing them every spring. Yes they are weeds in my garden and I do pull them out of my garden bed however I find them fairly easily controlled if they are pulled when they flower. I don’t use those dandelion forks. They have never worked for me. I use a thin trowel and loosen the soil a couple inches around the base of the plant and as far down as the trowel will go then I yank it up. Most of the root usually comes up. As long as you do it when the plant flowers and you get most of the root, it doesn’t come back. Of course if you let the plant establish itself over a couple of years, it is much harder to get rid of.
Dandelions, the ultimate low care groundcover. I don't use poisons in my garden either, so I either work with a dandelion fork, or semi-ignore them in the lawn. They do seem to come out of the garden much easier than the lawn. It's odd that people's hatred of a little yellow flower leads them to poisoning their own land.
ReplyDeleteThis year I'm happier than ever to see their proliferation in our neighborhood (don't tell my neighbors that hate them). The honey bees love them. I don't know if in Canada you had the die off of honeybees that we had down here, but I figure anything that might help our poor bees the better.
ReplyDeleteI did a post about dandelions, too. If you are interested it can be found here. Click here
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing was that when you posted that comment, that was the article I was reading in your blog. LOL I was happy to see someone else not maligning the poor dandelion.
ReplyDeleteWell, you know what they say about great minds! Seems you and I have a lot in common :)
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