Friends of the Jedi Gardener

One thing that I love about gardening is all of the friends that I have met. The many comments on this blog are great and it also seems that gardeners are very helpful and willing to share their experiences.

I have had some really great advice about many things but recently I have received advice about how to control garden weeds.

I used to not mind weeds so much. They add nice greenery to any garden and provide shelter for numerous bugs.

Weeds have always been a problem for me because I just figured I didn't have the time to keep weeding day in and day out and would have to wait to retire before I had a weed free garden. Every time I weed the pesky weeds keep coming back even after using the amazing stirrup hoe.

A good gardening friend said that she adds her grass clippings to her garden. This does two things. First, it acts as a mulch helping the soil not to dry out so quickly and second, as it decomposes, it releases nutrients into the soil. I am pretty sure this will be solid gold for the garden.

Here is a picture with a few layers of clippings:

Here are the clippings after they sit for a few weeks:

It looks much better after weeding and adding the clippings. I am hoping that this will prevent the weeds from coming back.

I also have a few neighbors who are very helpful with the garden:

Those are Skinks.

I also have a number of worms that I will be adding to my compost bin:

I will be writing about the bin soon. Its very exciting.

On a carrot note I have a carrot that has grown rather large. Here is a picture:

Who knew that carrots eventually grew flowers? I didn't.

I am concerned about pulling this Carrot as I don't want it to turn out like the last short carrot and I am considering leaving this as Schrodinger's Carrot! It currently exists as both a short and log carrot. This is a great vegetable paradox joke (Schrodinger's Cat). Ha ha.

Here are some random pictures of the garden in its current state. I think I will be picking some items soon:

These are Leak flowers. Pretty cool.

These are a few tomatoes:

These are squashes and cucumbers:

Here are some beans:

Below is a cucumber almost ready to pickle: