Comments on: a saner approach to fall cleanup, with the habitat network’s rhiannon crain

By: Lauren B.

Lauren B. — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 03:33:34 +0000

I always did this: it is called having a job, two kids, etc. so nothing ever got totally done. Now with no job and kids are married other compost happens and yardwork is still never all done. Ha, now I can be this way guilt free.

By: cintra

cintra — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 16:27:23 +0000

I have a small parcel of property…less than a quarter acre….I’m sure if I had a larger plot I could become more of a lazy gardener….But leaves are mulched and used as mulch….and I am in a manicured neighborhood so letting the grasses grow and seed is neighborly impossible….no room to build a brush pile but I do have a decaying wood pile in the back by my compost pile that is a home for voles…I now hear an owl outside some nights perhaps hunting them….and leaving a snag on my property isn’t safe…..I do however live near a cul de sac which has all that going on!!

By: Sigrid Gray

Sigrid Gray — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 20:52:21 +0000

When I first heard “a good gardener is a lazy gardener” decades ago I thought no way, not possible, not on my watch, but I have learned in myriad ways that statement is true.
Speaking to the subject of clean-up for bulbs: the bulb layer of my 1/2-acre property (no lawn) is some number over 1000 due to naturalization. Preparation for their emergence is about an hour brush-blading all the skelatonized stalks of last year’s perennials when I see bulb foliage beginning to show. All leaves that fell among the plants remain. During winter dense stalks of the standing garden go far in preventing leaves from matting so they easily join the duff of weed-wacked perennials to be mulch and fertilizer for the year. The bulbs come blasting up then in a natural textural foil of plant duff.
The only hazard I have encountered is weed wacker fuel going bad before its 1-hour repeat use the following spring.