The Hummingbird Garden was a mess – dead tithonia in one bed & dead Cosmos/zinnias in the other. I love Cosmos, but these had all fallen over …. the plants still bloomed laying over, but now that they're dead, it was like a thick mat of dead stalks. The first order of business was to untie all the tithonia stalks (blew over in a bad storm & had to tie them back up) & pull up the metal fence posts anchors. The tithonia was cut into manageable pieces and tossed into a pile outside of the garden fence. With the tithonia bed cleaned up, I could then use that bed as a place to put the Cosmos debris. Normally, I would load straight into our garden cart & haul it away, but “somebody” else was using the cart & would not give up possession for 15 minutes, so I had to go to the intermediate step of using the tithonia bed for debris. Once the Cosmos debris is hauled away (happening this morning – tithonia went last night), then the old pine needle mulch will go in the walkway & the bed will be weeded, if necessary. I'm glad this is done because once the ground freezes (which happened to me before), any weeding has to wait for a thaw.
Next was my “mystery” bed. I topped all of my veggie/flower beds (except for the 2 Hummingbird Garden beds) with leaf compost. All are looking just fine, except for one which was growing a great crop of some weed. Initially, it was a few green sprigs, but since we've had a mild fall/winter thus far, more & more “green” was showing up to the point the weeds were thick enough it was beginning to look like ground cover. Initially, I was just going to spray & kill it in the spring (vinegar, Epsom Salt, detergent), but it was getting larger & more dense so I checked it out & pulled a few. I was surprised at how the small plants had a fairly extensive root system and so by Spring, it was only going to be more established & harder to deal with. I was able to weed the entire bed thoroughly and worked the compost into the soil, too. Where this particular weed came from, I don't know – not the compost. This bed was used for radishes, cucumbers, a couple of Teddy Bear sunflowers & Morning Glories (plants are definitely not morning glories). The bed stayed “clean” all during the growing season – never had to weed it so I do not know where this stuff came from in such abundance! It's gone now & I'll keep an eye on all the beds, but so far, everything looks good. - can't wait for Spring planting season!
The temperature is dropping at least 30 degrees between today and tomorrow (with rain probably late afternoon & into the evening), so the lovely short-sleeve weather is going to be gone. A little “Christmas” weather is ok …. 'tis the Season! :-) Have a great weekend, everybody. ~Q