Category Archives: Trowel and Error

Apr 15 0 comments
Trowel and Error

‘Cause you got to have friends!

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums

As long as I can remember, my mother planted marigolds around her garden to help keep the bugs away.  So I plant marigold, and all other sorts of flowers around my garden.  I have a very eclectic garden with everything all mixed together, fruits, veggies, herbs, perennials and annuals.

Writing this blog is helping me get all of my notes, from library books,  newsletters, web posts, radio shows and more, organized and more usable.  That’s a good thing.

Here are the garden friends that I know of.  I’m sure there are many more and feel free to add to this list in the comments.    Apple – protected by chives

  • Asparagus – tomato, parsley, basil , carrots
  • Basil – peppers
  • Beans (bush) – celery, corn, potato, petunia, summer savory, cabbage, carrot, marigolds, cucumber, cauliflower
  • Beans (pole) – strawberries, cucumber
  • Beets – bush beans, lettuce, onion, kohlrabi
  • Broccoli – dill, chamomile, sage, peppermint, rosemary, beet, onion, potato, celery, aromatic herbs (especially sage and oregano)
  • Cabbage – dill, bean, potato, onion, celery, aromatic herbs, sage, nasturtiums
  • Carrots – chives, leeks, lettuce, peas, cabbage, onion, peppers, marigold, parsley, rosemary, sage
  • Cauliflower – bean, potato, onion, celery, aromatic herbs, sage
  • Chives – carrots (to improve flavor), apples (to protect from insects and borers)
  • Corn – marigolds, sunflowers, cucumber, legumes, squash, pumpkin, melon, early potatoes, morning glory, geraniums
  • Cucumber – corn, cabbage, tomato, bean radish, lettuce, early potato, chamomile, nasturtiums
  • Eggplant – tarragon, thyme, green bean, aromatic herbs, okra
  • Grapes – geraniums
  • Garlic – great for roses, raspberries
  • Lettuce – carrot, strawberry, cabbage, beet, radish, cucumber, soybeans, marigold
  • Melons – morning glory, corn, marigold, radish
  • Okra – eggplant, peppers
  • Onion – beets, radish, tomato, cabbage, carrots, marigold
  • Peas – caraway, carrots, corn, cucumber, bush beans, soybeans
  • Peppers – basil, okra, soybeans, carrots, onion, catnip, marigold, aromatic herbs, nasturtiums
  • Potato – bush beans, corn, pole bean, soybean, cabbage, catnip, eggplant, marigold
  • Pumpkin – corn, marigold
  • Radish – cucumber, onion, lettuce, peas, pole beans, chervil, nasturtium, marigold, mustard
  • Roses – corn, garlic, grapes, onion, marigold, parsley
  • Spinach – strawberry, cabbage, celery, eggplant, peas, onion
  • Squash – corn, soybean, cabbage, radish, tansy, borage
  • Strawberry – bush bean, lettuce, soybean, spinach, radish, onion, marigold, potato, borage, aromatic herbs, nasturtium
  • Tomato – asparagus, onion, carrots, broccoli, parsley, basil, chives, mint, soybeans, celery, gooseberries, catnip, garlic, nasturtiums, borage

Even more important may be the sworn enemies list:

  • Apples – do not like potatoes
  • Beans – do not like onions, fennel gladiolus or marigold
  • Bush – beans do not like leek, onion, fennel, garlic, gladiolus, pole beans or sunflowers
  • Beets – do not like pole beans or mustard
  • Broccoli – (and all it’s cousins) do not like pole beans, strawberries or tomatoes
  • Carrots – do not like dill
  • Cauliflower – does not like tomatoes or spinach
  • Corn – does not like tomatoes
  • Cucumbers – do not like potatoes or sage
  • Fennel – does not like cilantro
  • Garlic – does not like peas or beans
  • Lettuce – does not like fennel
  • Melons  – do not like potatoes
  • Onions and chives – do not like beans or sage
  • Peas – do not like onions, garlic, or gladiolus
  • Peppers – do not like kohlrabi or fennel
  • Potatoes – do not like apples, sunflowers or tomatoes (the feeling is mutual), pumpkin or squash
  • Radish – do not like potatoes, grapes or hyssop
  • Strawberries – do not like cabbage
  • Tomatoes – do not like apricot, corn, peppers, cabbage, fennel, dill or potatoes

And nobody likes ranunculus.  Evidently, ranunculus has a bad habit of poisoning the soil.
This is not a complete list by any account.  I usually only took notes on the things that interested me, so I’m sure there is a lot left out here.  Feel free to add your own combinations.  Have fun making everyone get along!

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Apr 13 0 comments
Trowel and Error

Lazy Lawn Care

KC kitty in the lawn

Fetch kitty in the lawn

Well, for us the lazy part may have to wait until next year.  You see, we got so busy in the fall that we didn’t over seed with winter rye grass and now we have weeds popping up everywhere.  But here is the basic idea of lazy lawn care.

  1. Over seed with winter rye.  Of course this is number one.  The rye grass shades the ground so that sun-loving weed seeds never get a chance to germinate in the spring and the rye grass makes a great green fertilizer.  Plus, the rye grass is gorgeous all winter long with no effort from you.  Our lawn (way back when) looked like a beautiful waving sea of green – so green that it almost hurt to look at.
  2. In the spring, as soon as you see any weeds start to appear, put out agricultural corn gluten meal.  This is NOT the corn meal that you buy at the grocery store.  You can find it at a feed mill or one the the garden centers that carries organics.  Corn gluten meal is 60% protein and 10% nitrogen (so it feeds your grass also).  It contains dipeptides (glutaminyl-glutamine, glycinyl-alanine, alaninyl-glutamine, alaninyl-asparagine and alaninyl-alanine) that inhibit root formation in seeds.  How’s that for a bit of fun science fact?  Because of the suppression of root formation, you only want to use corn gluten meal on a mature lawn and don’t use it at the same time that you try to seed your lawn or you will just waste your money.
  3. Mow high, mow often, and leave the clippings.  Set your lawn mower to the higher end of the scale for your particular grass.  This gives the grass an edge against the hot Texas summer by shading the roots.  Mow once a week to chop the heads off of those weeds that made it past the winter rye and corn gluten meal.  Grass can handle cutting, but weeds tend to not deal as well with it.  But if you have been gone for a while and the grass has gotten really tall, don’t cut it all the way back down at once because it can stress the roots.  Cut it back further a little at a time.  Leave the clippings to feed the soil unless they are big wet mats, which should be removed to the compost pile.  DON’T SCALP YOUR LAWN!  It just stresses it out and leaves you with bare spots.  Also, keep your mower  blade sharp.  Grass does much better when it is cut rather than torn.  Don’t mow wet grass because it can spread disease.
  4. Remove deep rooted weeds, like dandelions, by hand.  Dandelions, much to John’s dismay, are actually good for the plants around them because the bring needed nutrients from deep underground up to where other plants can use it.  By removing them by hand, you are also aerating the soil.
  5. If you must “kill” weeds, do it in a way that doesn’t do long term harm to the soil.  Try pouring boiling water on it.  Hot veggie water from steaming is great for this because it’s a two for one deal – dead weeds and fed plants.  Better yet, accept a few weeds.  The lawn is actually healthier with a few weeds here and there because they lure in beneficial insects that help protect your plants.  Diversity is always healthier than a monoculture.  I have actually tried to encourage the clover in our yard because it helps fix nitrogen from the air into the soil.
  6. Water seldom but deeply.  If you water too often, the roots look for water (and air!) only near the surface.  This can be a real problem when the heat kicks in.  If you let the soil dry out between watering, the roots go deeper looking for water.  In fact, don’t water at all.  Grasses are some of the most hardy plants on the planet, especially if you plant grasses that are suited for the area.  Sure it may turn a little brown, but it will green right back up when the water comes.  Water early in the morning is best.   And if you have a sprinkler system, for heaven’s sake, don’t water when there has been a down pour and the ground is water logged.  That is just wasteful.  The clay soils here really can’t deal with much more than about 1″ at a time and the runoff carries nutrients away from your lawn, where they might be need, into lakes, rivers and streams where they are not only not needed but cause a cycle called eutrophication.  That’s bad.
  7. Aerate the hard packed spots.  You can do this mechanically by renting a machine at Home Depot or Lowes (kind of expensive) or with a garden fork.  You can also do it mechanically by pulling those dandelions or by walking around with special spiked sandals that fit on to your shoes.  Mechanical aeration is easier done, especially with clay soils, right after a rain.  An even easier and lazier way to aerate your lawn is to get the earthworms and other dirt dwellers to do the work for you.  Put out compost on your lawn a couple of times a year to encourage them and to feed the soil.  Dry molasses is another great soil food.  You can find it at the feed mill along with the corn gluten meal.
  8. The easiest way to deal with lawns is to landscape them out of existence and plant drought tolerant perennials and annuals instead.  If that’s not an option though, go with the most drought tolerant grass you can find, like buffalo grass, or a grass alternative like clover and conserve the water.
  9. Apply an organic fertilizer at the beginning of March and the beginning of June, but never in the heat of July and August.  It is just too hard on it.  Have your soil tested to see what might be lacking (I know that Lowes will test for free in early spring) and then add organic amendments as needed.  Don’t use chemical fertilizers.  Most of it will just end up in our waterways and wreak havoc on those aquatic system even to the point of causing massive fish kills.
  10. Pest control – it’s just not usually a problem in organic lawns.  If you have problems with fire ants, though, try boiling water on the mound followed by a treatment of beneficial nematodes.  Nematodes are microscopic worms that infect and kill the ants.  For fleas, ants and chiggers, you can treat the lawn with agricultural (not pool) diatomaceous earth or DE.  DE  must be used on a dry lawn on a calm day and you need to wear a mask to protect your lungs.  DE is the silicon shell of microscopic organisms called diatoms and it is a powder that, to you and me, feels as soft as silk, but to a bug it feels and acts like shards of glass.  DE is obviously not discriminate and will kill good bugs as well as bad so only use it if you have to.

There.  I think that’s it.  And yes, we had to learn most of these things the hard way.  It’s OK if that’s how you learn best too.

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Apr 10 0 comments
Trees, Trowel and Error

Garden Bones – A Story of Trees

It was a little overwhelming moving from a house with a lot of structure in the yard to a completely blank canvas.

Well, OK.  It wasn’t completely blank.  In the back yard, there was a raised area inside of landscaping timbers but it was all grass.  There were also two Live Oak trees, but they were not healthy.  In fact one of them was very sick.  We found out later that there had been a series of three pairs of Live Oak trees attempted there.  When the spring rains came and we had “Lake Fierke” in our back yard, I started to take a closer look.

When you plant a tree, you need to make sure that you don’t plant it too deep and cover the ‘root flair’.   Picture, in your mind, the pencil drawing of a ‘tree’ and you can see at the bottom how it flairs back out a little bit.  That is the way a tree is supposed to look.  If it is a straight line all the way to the ground, it was planted too deep and the tree will suffer.  So, I could tell that our tree was planted too deep and now with all the water I knew it was in real trouble, so I decided to take up my shield and sword and save the fair tree.

Sick Live Oak Tree

Sick Live Oak Tree

OK, so it was a shovel and not a sword.  It is hard to tell from this picture just how sick the tree was, but it really was not good.  I began digging (and digging) to expose the root flare and I found that the burlap and wire had never been removed when the tree was planted – for either of our trees!  The other Live Oak wasn’t planted as deeply and so it was doing a little better, but this poor tree seemed like a goner.  I dug as deeply as I could and, using wire cutters, cut out as much of the wire as I could, but it was still debatable as to whether the tree would make it.

Mud Pit

Mud Pit

The ground in that area was awful too.  I had to buy a pump that year to pump out our “Lake Fierke” because the ground was so hard and packed.  The water stood for over a week.  The smell had gotten so bad from the stagnant water that you could have sworn we were in a Louisiana swamp.  Watch out for the gators!  I pumped hundreds of gallons of water out of that back yard.

Anyway… back to the tree.

Tree-strangling wire

Tree-strangling wire

I dug out as much as I could, but I was still worried about the tree, and as you can see, it was not a little tree.  I sent emails with pictures (these pictures) to Howard Garrett and he was so kind as to help me.  I told him what all I had done and he advised me to have the tree removed – it was past help.  Removal just seemed so drastic (and expensive) to me, so I promptly ignored his advice and used his sick tree treatment on it instead.  Thank you so much for your help and advice, Mr. Garrett, but I’m glad I didn’t take it this time.  The tree is much happier and healthier now and the soil around it has greatly improved.

We have now added many trees to the back yard.  We added a Bald Cypress to help soak up some of the water (they are also drought tolerant – what a tree!) and then our son, Travis, brought home another one from a class project so now we have a pair.  We have also planted a ‘Forest Pansy’ Redbud, a Vitex, a Ginkgo, a couple of Crepe Myrtles, a Lace Bark Elm, a Cedar Elm, a Pomegranate, an Eastern Red Cedar, several Althea, a Weeping Peach (two, actually, twisted together), and an Arkansas Blacktwig apple (an heirloom).  In the front yard, we have removed a very badly placed Bradford Pear that blew over in a wind (they are very weak trees!) and replaced it with a much better positioned ‘Moorpark’ Apricot.  We now have structure in our yard and healthy trees!

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Apr 07 0 comments
Trowel and Error

April – Bud Month

Trailing Purple Verbena

Trailing Purple Verbena

Gladness is born of the April weather,

And the heart is as light as a wind tossed feather.

Who could be sad on a day like this?

The care that vexed us no longer is.  –  Eben Eugene Rexford

What’s blooming today? A stroll through the garden shows the trailing purple verbena in full bloom.  Many of the roses are sending out test buds to see if the weather is good.  I have blooms on my ‘Souvenir Du St. Anne’, Golden Celebration, Grauss an Auchen, Hiederoslein, Mrs. B.R. Cant, Joseph’s Coat, Red Knock Out, Tuscan Sun, Traviata, Hermosa, Belinda’s Dream, and a white rose (I just can’t remember it’s name but it is French).

All the trees are budding out.  The apricot had just a few blooms on it and the ‘Forest Pansy’ Redbud is done with it’s bloom but the beautiful purple leaves are coming out now.  The weeping peach trees are still heavy with bloom even if some of them are beginning to fade.  The Arkansas Black-Twig apple is just now starting to open its buds.  The ginkgo and the bald cypress are greening.

The perennials are reemerging.  The horseradish and Texas Star hibiscus are back and the salvias are gorgeous even if they aren’t blooming yet.  The strawberries are blooming (and producing – yum!)  The blue bells are just beginning to fade.  The Gulf Coast penstemon is blooming – come on humming birds!  The wine cup is highly mounded and has opened one test bud and so has the oxeye daisy.  The Spanish lavender and coral sage are beautiful.  The phlox is just beginning – I can’t wait until the fragrance starts to fill the air.  This is just the beginning!

A Canteloupe Tree

A Canteloupe Tree

We have been busy planting over the weekend.  We planted yellow squash, zucchini, more Sugar-Ann peas, nasturtium, hyacinth bean vine, loofah, bird-house gourd, beets, brandywine tomato, huscky cherry tomato, beefmaster tomato, cucumber, basil, Anaheim pepper, and alyssum.  And we liked our surprise cantaloupe so much last year that we also planted cantaloupe right next to our cedar elm again so that we can have another cantaloupe tree!  Samantha got in the act too and planted some blue fescue grass in a pretty little pot.  John decided to start a few things in egg cartons, so he planted gaillardia, columbine, Bells of Ireland, delphinium, Shasta daisy, basil, brandywine tomato, beefsteak tomato, tam jalapeno, and cilantro.  Some of the seed was really old because it came from my mother cleaning out her stock.  We will have to see how they do.

We also worked a lot on the pond and put in some waterlilies and anaichis (underwater plants).  Before we cleaned the pond, it was red from the tannins produced by the leaves that the wind carried into the pond that we then neglected to remove.  The pond has now gone from red to green (believe it or not, this is good).  The plants will start using up some of the nutrients soon and the waterlilies will start to cover the pond and block the light to starve out the algae.  We can now see our fish, though, and they seem very happy.  I count 6 fancy goldfish and two mosquito fish.  We still can’t see well enough to the bottom to see of the plecostomus made it through the winter.  There is something else living in there too!  I thought there was a green leaf in the pond so I tried to grab it and it squirmed right out of my fingers.  I can’t wait for the water to clear to get a better look.  Maybe a tadpole?  Whatever it was, it was bright green and about 1/2 inch long.

I hope you are having as much fun in your garden as I am in mine!

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Apr 06 0 comments
Trowel and Error

What about composting?

mvc-677f

Kid's Garden w/compost ring

Composting is definitely worth the effort. You can buy some pretty fancy composters and I have a tumbling style that was given to me, but I haven’t really been pleased with any of the commercially available ones. At the Grapevine Botanical Gardens at Heritage Park (on Ball St.), the Gaylord Texan has donated a demonstration compost area with several different kinds of composting systems.

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Compost ring w/melon vine

The way we compost is about as lazy as you can get. We have rings made of wire mesh about 3 feet tall and about 3 feet in diameter. We used to have landscape fabric lining the inside, but we haven’t tended them so long that the fabric has disintegrated. What I like about the rings is that, other than making them and setting them up, there is no more work until it’s time to move them. You just put your clipping, trimmings and table waste in the top and it comes out as soil on the bottom and feeds the plants as it does – no turning required. And right now, with the landscape fabric gone,  you can see the progression from food and plant all the way to soil  It’s pretty cool. We plant heavy feeders like melons, tomatoes or peppers around the ring and they usually block the view of the ring by late spring.

There are lots of ways to compost, though and it will definitely help the environment and probably your soil too. For a family of five, we have very little in our trash collection each week. We shred a lot of our paperwork and that gets composted along with any pressed board things like egg cartons (if they aren’t used for other things. For the five of us, we usually just have one 30 gallon trash bag (barely filled).  The rest all goes into the recycling bins.

The only things you wouldn’t want to compost are things like diseased plants, weeds that have gone to seed and fatty or meaty food scraps (we give those to the dogs anyway.)

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Apr 05 0 comments
Trowel and Error

Pass-Along Plants to “Pass” On

I took a garden tour through a neighbor’s garden and noticed that there was a particular plant coming up everywhere. I asked her what it was and the look on her face told it all… it was a weed. It started out as a lovely “trumpet vine”. And, yes, it is very lovely. At least it’s lovely until you find it choking out absolutely everything. It’s a native to Texas, but it’s one native that doesn’t play well with others.

As I continued my tour of my neighbor’s yard I saw another plant that, although it seemed well behaved enough in her garden, has been on a rampage in mine. It was given to me by another gardener and I couldn’t remember what it was called. She told me that it was “Lime Light Artemesia”. Yeah that rings a bell. She said that when she worked at a gardening nursery all the staff were told that they couldn’t purchase from the original shipment, so they were all waiting on pins an needles to get to buy from the next shipment –  and they all bought several.  It wasn’t long after that that they were all trying to rip it back out.  So see?  It’s not just swaps where these dragons of the garden can come from.

Some of the other plants that I have acquired from friends, swaps and nurseries or that have just popped up out of nowhere are Carolina Snailseed, Sweet Autumn Clematis, White Wisteria, some kind of wild ruellia.

I have also found that some of these “weeds” can be rehabilitated if you put them in another place where they are not quiet as comfortable.  It may be a gamble and it seems to work better with sun loving plants going into shade rather than the other way around.  Depending on where you shop, nurseries are less likely to give negative information about a plant, but don’t hesitate to ask what the growing habits of a particular plant are and whether it is invasive or not.  I will still continue to get most of plants from swaps because I’m more likely to get plants there that I know will be happy in my Texas garden but I will ask!

mvc-218f

Morning Glories and Cypress Vine

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Apr 03 0 comments
Trowel and Error

Acceptable & Unacceptable Products in an Organic Program

Natural Organic Home Garden Health Howard Garrett Dirt Doctor – Acceptable & Unacceptable Products in an Organic Program

Don’t know what is or isn’t safe to use in an organic program?  This will tell you.

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Mar 28 0 comments
Trowel and Error

Why organic gardening?

Why not just poison what you don’t want and then plant what you do want?  After all, aren’t we humans above and beyond “nature”?

That’s a fairly easy question to answer if you are growing fruits and veggies that you plan to eat.  We have all heard about the problems of herbicides and pesticides in our food.  But what if you are just growing pretty flowers or a lush lawn of nothing but grass?

Even if you don’t plan on eating anything from your garden, organics is a safer way to go.  Many of the chemicals used in herbicides and pesticides have been linked to cancer or shown to be neurotoxins or endocrine disrupters.  Rachael Carson wrote the book Silent Spring in 1962.  She was the scientist employed by the government who brought many of the connections of chemically treating pests and disease to health out into the public stream of conscience. Since many of the these chemicals are harmful if they are breathed in or absorbed through the skin, they are a danger to people, pets and wildlife.  When you see your toddler crawling through the yard trying to chase your dog or putting everything in her mouth, that thought begins to hit home.

Diazanon, as an example, was banned for use on golf courses and sod farms in 1988 and it is no longer allowed to be sold in the US since 2004, but I actually have a neighbor that I found using it to try to kill fire ants just last year.  Even though Diazanon can no longer be sold in the US, there was no effort to try to recall what had already been sold.  US chemical companies are also still allowed to sell it to foreign buyers.  The truth of the matter is that my neighbor would have probably done much better just pouring a pot of boiling water on the mound and/or putting out beneficial nematodes (microscopic worms).

From an ecological standpoint even chemical treatments, such as fertilizers, are harmful.  These types of fertilizers are much harder for plants to absorb and what is not used immediately by the plant gets washed away into our streams, rivers, ponds and lakes.  This sets up a process called eutrophication, where excess nutrients cause excessive plant growth (algal blooms).  The excessive plant growth causes the water to become depleted in oxygen when dead plant matter begins to decompose.  This can cause massive fish die offs and further loss of diversification in the greater ecological web.

That is the down side of the chemical approach, but the organic approach also has major advantages.  Your soil is not just “dirt”, and plants don’t just depend on basic chemical building blocks in that “dirt”.  Soil is actually alive.  One teaspoon of soil (in a healthy garden) has about a billion bacteria as well as fungi, worms and other insects.  These soil critters are primarily beneficial to your plants, but the use of chemicals can cause a huge reduction in their numbers and diversification (there’s that word again!)  The use of organics actually feeds and builds this system to keep bad organisms in check.

If you think that organics are too expensive then you are not considering the full cost of chemicals.  Organic maintenance , once the soil has been rehabilitated from chemical usage, requires fewer fertilizer applications, less water and the plants have fewer insect and disease problems (of course it also helps if you plant things that are happy in their environment too).

So, come on!  Doesn’t restoring the environment, protecting waterways, protecting pets and family and growing better tasting food and healthier plants sound like it might be worth the effort?  I think it’s a lot more fun too!

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Mar 27 0 comments
Trowel and Error

Starting A New Bed

I have found that the laziest way to start a new garden bed is to start early.  Let nature do the work for you.

If you are putting in a new bed, there is probably something already there that you don’t want.  If it is something like rocks, bushes, trees or very large and woody weeds then you will have to go ahead and work.  I’m so sorry.

But, if what is already there is grass and/or smaller weeds then you have it made.  Just lay down a nice thick layer of cardboard.  (My husband works in a warehouse and has access to all the used boxes I could ever want!  Yeah me!)   You could use newspaper – and we have – but the weeds find their way through much more easily than with the cardboard, especially Bermuda grass which is one of the worst weeds I have in my garden in spite of my husbands fondness for it.  But even tough grass roots have a hard time finding their way through the cardboard.

Before laying down the cardboard, you may want to mark out your bed with bricks, rocks, pavers, or edging of some sort.  I would stay away from railroad ties, especially if you think you might plant some veggies, because of all the chemicals that they are treated with.  We have even made beds without edging at all, but that can create extra work later depending on your landscape.

Most cardboard boxes will have some packing tape on them.  Take as much of the tape off as you can before laying them out, but don’t stress over it.  The cardboard will eventually degrade and feed all the wonderful little organisms in your soil that create great dirt.  The tape will let go and rise up through the mulch over time but by then you have to look closely to see it.  You can just consider that part of your regular garden clean up.

Once you have the cardboard down, top it off with a thick layer of mulch (several inches) and just walk away.  That bed will be ready to plant in a couple of months – grass and weed free.  Plus, the soil will have been amended by all the yummy organic stuff that was killed under the cardboard and the cardboard itself.  For beds like this, you can even use freshly chipped trees.  We get our mulch free from a local tree service, but you want to be careful about putting green mulch on already planted plants.  Our mulch usually ends up sitting on a boat pad for a couple of months before it gets used.

If  you can’t stand looking at a bed with nothing in it, you might arrange some potted plants in that area.  If that STILL doesn’t do it for you, you can plants some plants before putting down the cardboard, but then you want to be careful to used aged mulch.  You will also want to dig extra wide when you plant to make sure that the cardboard covers all weeds and grass that are still present.  When you set the cardboard down, try to get close to the base of the plant, but don’t let the cardboard or mulch directly touch the plant or you may end up with a dead or diseased plant.

Good luck and have fun being lazy!

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