Last year in August I posted about a problem I was having with a thistle-like weed that kept coming back, no matter how many times I dug it out. You can read that post here. I had found some advice online that said if you let it start to flower, and then dig it out, you'll weaken it enough to kill it, so I decided to try that.
Bad move.
It never reached flowering stage, never produced anything that looked like a bud. It got taller, and when we got a frost in November, it died back. But then, over the course of the winter, it started to spread via runners.
Originally it was only on the left hand side of this path. But soon, it had traveled under the flagstones, popping up between them and on the right-hand side of the path.
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| Here it is coming up among the Pacific Coast iris growing on the far right-hand side. |
I have lots of plans for changes I want to make to the garden this summer. I posted about the gravel garden here, and I have plenty of other work in the offing. But I knew I had to deal with this dang weed pronto, before it took over the entire bed, and then my entire garden. I had to put my other plans on a back burner.
So I started digging, and pulling up the flagstone pavers. I found a huge network of white spaghetti-like roots growing all over and under the pavers. There were even plants trying to come up underneath the flagstones.
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| After lots of digging |
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| Weeds be gone, but lots of little white spaghetti-like roots remain to be sifted out of the soil |
I had to dig up all the perennials growing in the area as well, check their roots for signs of the thistles, and store them temporarily in a plastic bin.
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| I stored many plants I dug up in this storage container |
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| There was a thistle coming up at the edge of this Hosta. I had to wash the roots to separate them. |
I set up a gardener's sieve and my wheelbarrow, and began sifting all the soil by hand, one shovelful at a time. The work gave me a new appreciation for the difficult life of a gold prospector.
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| My trusty tools -- wheelbarrow, gardener's sieve and spade |
At the end of the first day's work, I had two wheelbarrow-loads of fluffy soil, a lot of rocks, and two five-gallon buckets of roots, debris, and tiny pebbles. Not to mention, hundreds of rescued earthworms.
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| Lovely pile of sifted soil |
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| Some big ugly critter has been digging in the garden -- oh wait, that was me. |
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| Two five-gallon buckets full of dirty pea gravel and other debris -- including several clumps of those nasty white spaghetti-like roots from the thistle, sifted out of the soil |
At the end of Day Two:
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| The pile of sifted dirt gets bigger |
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| There's nothing to do now but keep going, I sure hope it's worth it. The area is wet because I put the gardener's sieve between those rocks and washed the pea gravel and debris there. |
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| Pot o' rocks -- a perennial crop around here |
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| Pots o' little rocks |
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| Debris and roots |
At the end of four back-breaking days of sifting:
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| Ginormous pile of soil |
I've never really been happy with the fact that this path only had five flagstones. One evening after work, Nigel and I stopped at Lowe's and bought a bunch more to make the path more substantial. I pushed and pulled the stones around to see if I could come up with a good layout. Even though the new flagstones are a different color, I made it work by alternating them.
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| This should work! |
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| A nice clean space for the new layout |
At first I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all those little pebbles and pea gravel-size stones that I had sifted out of the soil. Then I realized I could use them under the new flagstones. I had to take another day to sift through the gravel, thoroughly removing any more little pieces of root or anything that looked like it might one day want to grow up to become a weed.
Over the weekend I drafted Nigel to move the flagstones into their final spots.
Ta Da!
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| Re-newed path |
The fluffy soil will need some moisture to pack down again. We've already used the new path to move a couple of wheelbarrow-loads of compost, and it works great.
That stupid thistle better not show its face here again. If it does, I doubt I'll be able to kill it with a dirty look. I may have to get out the big guns, like Roundup, which I've never used.
And now...to replant! But first I have a date with a big bottle of ibuprofen.