Background: My home is in PA, which is a transition zone. The soil is lousy; poor shallow topsoil with a shale base. My grass variety is 'turf type tall fescue'. Last year, a heat wave and constant winds killed much of my grass on my south side. Stupid me: I thought the grass had gone dormant only to learn that persistent heat absent water will kill even grasses designed for drought. I've since learned the lesson that you need to water under persistent dry conditions.
Last fall, I reseeded to replace the dead grass. Today, my southern exposure lawn is a mix of 'turf type tall fescue', annual grass and weeds.
Any suggestion for:
1. Improving my soil.
2.Killing intermixed weeds.
3. Reseeding for next year.
Thanks for any suggestion(s).
Already harvesting tomatoes and peppers, basil.
From the Big Valley.
Here’s mama feeding a juicy bug to the babies. 
Here’s one of the more adventurous babies.
Here’s the fledgling that I found near the bench.
Oh boy - went out to the garden this morning to check on things. Since Thursday night, we’ve had 2 inches of rain. Friday was cloudy with off/on showers. Saturday maybe a light shower in the am, but mostly damp, dreary, high of 72. The sun was out this morning - yay!!
Back to the garden - I had a mild panic attack - it is out of control! The grass/weeds around & in the walkways must have grown an inch or two. That’s the “bad”. On the “good”, my marble-sized tomatoes are now the size of golf balls, maybe even a little larger! My teensy weensie cucumber (first one), is mow the size of a large pickle. The bell peppers have started blooming. All of the flowers are growing - i would say 1-2 inches. The Giant Sunflowers are really getting big. My climbing vines are job #1 - getting major “haircuts” to keep them reasonably on the trellises. Job #2, that I have just completed, was spraying the weeds/grass around the beds & in the walkways. The sun being out should help the spray work (plus I add a squirt or two of Dawn).
I can’t mow around the garden since I’ve sprayed, but the yard is ankle deep in clover (lots of honey bees - more than bumble this year, so that’s great)- will get mowed this evening or tomorrow. Fields will be tomorrow when I’m not making muddy tracks. I have some steps to our generator shed to replace - made out of rocks that are an uneven surface. During the ice storms this winter, I felt like I was going to break my neck every time I had to use them. Today is a good day to take care of that issue & replace with a flat surface - I keep some gardening stuff in there too, so good steps will be safer.
Going to be a busy day, but hey ..... the sun is out & the garden is happy :-)
It’s feast or famine with the rainfall here in Central Missouri. We’ve gone from a cool, wet pattern, to a hot, dry pattern in just a very short period of time. Two weeks ago things were suffering due to too much moisture, now I’m watering. Crazy.
But that’s ok, because it’s making my plants very happy.
I spent the whole whole weekend fishing and swimming and boat riding. Now I’ll have to spend a few evenings pulling weeds to get caught back up on that.
Garlic looks to be about two weeks away from being ready to harvest. The tops are starting to die back, so I know that it won’t be long.
Just spent the morning weeding and picking off Colorado Potato beetles and eggs off my potato plants.
I need to check my tomatoes too, to make sure they are not getting hornworms or anything else.
I can only deal with so much of insect control in a day.|
UGH!!!!!
I do have plumeria starting to bloom:
And, a pineapple lilly that I've had for years - I moved to a different location - and it is now blooming:
I'll post photo when it's fully in bloom.