Spring cleaning in the garden is always amazing to me. Plants that are looking so totally dead, are really not. I am so grateful for the softer soil and the milder (cooler) temperatures as we work. You can grab a whole handful of weed and pull it fully out (roots and all) from the soft cool soil. We remove all of the dead, pulling weeds as much as possible as we go through the whole garden. Clearing so can start to sprout up and blossom again.
Cleanup begins with all the fruit trees done in the winter. Now it is the berries then on to the herbal tea garden, herbs, spices, and everything else. see all the dead hanging out on the sides of the raised strawberry bed.
Big piles of weeds are easily piled up and burned in the middle of the garden. The ash is worked back into the soil with the tractor disc and rototilling, which is the next step. Ash is one of God’s fertilizers. All stalks and dead are burned.
EXCEPT FOR THE MINT!, they are simply burned outside of the garden or else they will be growing everywhere. I only have to miss a single leaf and a new mint plant begins., SUNFLOWERS too, don’t go there with me, that takes a couple of pages of words even to begin to describe.
All year long I approach garden chores on a first come first needed basis. Like, the asparagus is the first crop so it gets cleared first. It is the only way I can keep from going crazy trying to keep up.
I had to clean out my strawberry beds too. Never had to do that before. Glad to see your beds, lets me know I did the right thing, cleaning out the beds…. they look good now. Had to replace a 6 foot section in my mothers raised strawberry beds…. bought her a few plants yesterday. Thanks Valerie…