Tackling one bed at a time for clean up, weeding and dividing hostas.
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Tools I’m using:
A.M. Leonard Deluxe Soil Knife: https://www.amleo.com/leonard-deluxe-stainless-steel-soil-knife/p/4752/
Atlas Nitrile Gloves (pack of 6): https://amzn.to/2LOKq8j
Sneeboer Ladies Spade: https://www.gardentoolcompany.com/products/ladies-spade-by-sneeboer
Expandable rake (similar): https://amzn.to/2LuQbsS
Niwaki tool roll: https://www.niwaki.com/store/tool-roll/
Garrett Wade garden cleanup bag: https://www.garrettwade.com/set-of-leaf-garden-debris-bags.html
My name is Erin and I love sharing inspiration and information with real-life gardeners. I live and garden in southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5.
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20 Comments
Oh I'd be so angry at that darn deer that ate your tree! I guess gardening in a city has a few minor advantages. I like your strategy to completely finish an entire area of your garden. I'm going to try this in lieu of my usual haphazard approach.
Been cleaning up the garden here lately 🤗
I’m loving the nice weather we are finally getting!
Hope you have a wonderful week! 💜🌱
That looked very similar to how I spent my day yesterday. It’s good to wait until the small creatures have woken up and are done with that winter protection before we clean up.
Ditto. Much easier in the spring, also.
Please do a video when you edge!!
I'm doing the same thing… leaving most of the clean up until spring and mulching a lot of plants, especially grasses, in place. The "chop and drop" method really works for me and saves me hauling all that biomass away to the compost pile. This year I have yards and yards of wood chips to add as a mulch… Love watching you work!
I'm excited to see your projects! Can't wait to see the hostas and dogwood leaf out. What color is your dogwood?
I do the same!! Just mulch over the leaves. So much easier and my plants are doing great. Started doing this years ago when I said why am I taking off and then putting back the leaves. 🤔
I feel the exact same way about edging!! lol
I really appreciate your no-nonsense approach to gardening. I hope you post a video showing how you do your edging. I need some advice in that area. Thanks to you, I’m trying dahlias for the first time this year. They have started sprouting in their pots, so I take them outside every day for sunlight and then bring them back in the garage at night. I’m in central IL zone 5. I really wanted the HS Date variety you have but couldn’t find them anywhere. I hope I can find them next year.
I've always kind of struggled with whether to clean up in fall or spring. We have very humid weather and are prone to mildews and fungi, and we also have a problem with voles. They like to hide anywhere they can. There's also times I am too busy working and can't get to it in the spring soon enough and for example some of my potentillas suffered damage because they were being smothered in leave debris last year.
On the other hand, I hate to take away any beneficial bugs little home! I also have more energy in the spring to tackle those projects after "resting" all winter. I'm so exhausted in the fall I'm ready to hunker down for winter! =D
I think the best thing for my situation is to cut back dead parts of plants that might hold molds and fungi in the fall and leave the leaves, and try to pull the leaves back away from plants, but still leave on the ground, in the spring. I noticed when I left the leaves around my vegetable garden fence last year that I had way less grass and weed encroachment into the garden so… learned something there.
I would love to see how you edge your beds, and what's the best tools, way to go about, etc. I don't even own an edger! Lol!
I wait until a bit later too — I hate the idea of disturbing some poor creature's winter home, plus we actually need a lot of them in our gardens. It's obviously different from region to region, but in years past I've accidentally disturbed frogs with overzealous outdoor cleaning. We also have sweet little slug-eating hedgehogs that like to bed down in piles of leaves and logs over winter.
This may be a weird request, can you show how you edge?! Everybody I feel like does it differently and I'm always curious to see how people do it and if there's any other efficient ways to do it.
Now you have learned the secret of Master Gardeners. Just treat each area as a garden unto itself. Focus on that area alone until you have finished with it. Then move on to the next area. The garden is made up of separate smaller gardens and the plantings pull it together as a whole. The art of the garden is to see it as individual spaces BEFORE you see it as a whole. If you work on one area at a time and then stop for the day you will not burn out and it will not become a chore to get through. Instead it will be a pleasure and the plants will thank you. If you work on one area at a time and then observe that area it will be able to inform you as to what to do next. I learned this lesson many years ago while visiting my Irish Uncle Mike in Worthing England. He had a fabulous small by American standards garden. He was a tall bloke. About 6'4" at least. Every day he would take himself to the back for of the kitchen, put on his old crude gardening shoes and then announce without turning his head and with a lilting Irish Brogue, Lily (his wife), I'll be in the East garden today. I would be looking out the door and thinking……East garden…where is that! I could see the whole garden from where I stood. And so he would prance out to the East garden and putz around doing this and that and compliment his efforts and then stop for the day and celebrate with a cupa (tea). The next day the same routine except he would announce…Lilly, I'l be in the West Garden today! Rain or shine he would do the same thing every day until he went to all parts of his beautiful garden. He would study the plants and talk to them lovingly. Something in me erupted and the garden gene was birthed. I came home to America and announced to my daughters who were young then that, "girls we no longer have a yard, we have a garden. They looked at each other real funny like. And we are no longer going to work in the yard, we are going to PLAY in the GARDEN!. Now who wants to volunteer to be my first playmate of the month!. My oldest daughter would do nothing but complain the whole time. She ended up becoming a Landscape Architect! I would put a timer that had a rope attached to it around my neck and set it for one hour and play in one small garden at a time. That is truly the secret of how to build a beautiful garden and enjoy it. I tell everyone that a "yard' is a place where prisoners go to exercise. A 'garden' is where you go to experience unending joy! I am glad that you have discovered this important secret of little gardens make up the whole. It really makes a big difference either when you are building a garden or maintaining it. I still practice this to this day. Pass it on!
I normally divide my Hibicus in the fall, but can they be divided in the spring.
Thanks for the peak into your garden brain. Sharing is caring. We gardeners are quite a bit alike. I Really love your videos.
I’ve started leaving the leaves etc overwinter got a little push back by neighborhood committee but they backed off. I also rescued a bunch of Hostas from a large commercial cement planter being demolished. They are in buckets now because I haven’t gotten my garden completed yet. Thanks for posting. I’m learning 💚😅
I feel the same about edging 🐝
I have thought about using leaf mulch, but I'm concerned about overwintering diseases and destructive insects. Like, spider mites. Am I just being paranoid? Is this super unlikely?
I’m surprised you haven’t given us footage of the deer eating your plants😝