Before and after

[imafan26]

I spent three days working on the yard. It has been raining nearly every day. In fact is started raining again now. There were only 3 sunny mornings this week. It has rained every afternoon and night.

I decided to tackle the jungle of weeds.
The Indian Hawthorne grows very slowly. It has grown about 5 inches since 1989. The e. cotonifolia, aka, Caribbean copper plant is usually a topiary ball. It will look much redder with mostly younger leaves and less coppery.

[imafan26]

Yesterday I tackledsome of the weeds in the front yard.

[imafan26]

I also caught a few snails in the weeds as well. They have a lot of good hiding places.
The green cans were picked up on Friday and there is one more green day till Christmas. Today, I took 6 bags of trimmings and weeds to the recycling center. One green can is already full. I cut the last 4 branches of the bilimbi and it filled the can. I have one can left.
Yesterday I also cleaned up my nursery bench and caught a slug and snail on the bench. Found another dead cymbidium and I only had that one since April. It only bloomed once. I harvested the ginger on Thanksgiving day and I replanted the container with new MG soil. I found a mizuna so I planted that in the garden.

Today I planted a new Waimanalo long eggplant and cilantro. The mizuna looks like it is still alive and the komatsuma is coming back to life. I have moved most of the lavender plants under the eaves to keep them out of the constant rain.
The succulents are full of weeds and actually that will help them because they will suck up some of the excess water.

[applestar]

Wow you weren't kidding about all the weeds!

Great find with the blooming orchid, and it's tedious but good to find all those slugs and snails. They are sneaky. Sometimes, I will pick up all I could find, dispose of them, then turn over one pot that I didn't look under and find another HUGE specimen.

And that's a pretty serious haircut on the E. cotonifera. How long will it take to fill in?

Lots of work! Good job.

[imafan26]

Actually, it is used to it. It should grow back out in a couple of months maybe longer because it is the cooler time of the year. I usually don't let it get that big before I cut it, but I do cut it back the same way all the time. People keep asking me for cuttings from the tree when it is in its lollipop form, but I tell them, that the tree does not naturally look like that, it looks that way only because it is being pruned.

Most of the grass died out during the summer. This is where my tree was and the ground is subsiding now because the roots are decaying. The rain and the storm of the week just helped the weeds really take off. The weeds are everywhere and some of them are really nasty ones. I have started to use herbicides because I cannot get the roots out of the persistant weeds like bind weed, nut sedge, fukien tea, asparagus fern, baby's tears, and bamboo and I have burned out 3 weed whackers this year already since electric weed whackers cannot tackle weeds this tall. I have wild bitter melon that the birds bring. There are people who like them, but I don't like to eat wild bitter melon. Allspice, African tulip, Fukien tea, and desert honeysuckle are coming from the neighbor's yard. I have another wild tree that is growing in a few spots in the yard that I have to cut down and kill the stumps. I also have McArthur palms from my own trees popping up because I am not getting to the seedlings fast enough.

It is probably why I am having so much problems with the snails as well. Even though, I don't water most of these places, there are a lot of hiding places for them and a lot of young growth to eat. They just would rather eat my vegetable seedlings than the weeds.

[catgrass]

Wow-lots of work going on there! I have a slug/snail problem, too, but I also have a lot of toads. I use sluggo a lot-Lord knows how many I'd have if I didn't!

[applestar]

I have started to use herbicides because I cannot get the roots out of the persistant weeds like bind weed, nut sedge, fukien tea, asparagus fern, baby's tears, and bamboo and I have burned out 3 weed whackers this year already since electric weed whackers cannot tackle weeds this tall.

I couldn't get over that you named "Fukien tea" as one of your persistent WEEDS when we see desperate pleas for help to keep them alive in the Bonsai sub-forums

[imafan26]

Fukien tea from the neighbors yard throws seeds. If I don't get to them when they are young, the root is very hard to pull out. Same thing with the palms.

[imafan26]

It has been a couple of months. I have made progress on some things and I am still playing catch up on weeds.

[imafan26]

The snails finally left the garden alone long enough for things to grow.
I have some beets that are just starting to swell, Texas granex, garlic, Broccoli DeCicco, Brussel's Spouts, Curly Vates Kale, cutting celery, rakkyo, mizuna, Suyo cucumber. A couple of them probably should have been picked a couple of days ago they are over a foot long. Tatsoi, Won Bok, Kay Choi (one giant one needs to be picked too), tomato (its a wild one I just caged it. I think it is cherry. Purple Komatsuna, swiss chard (baby).
The long eggplant is the first one on my new eggplant. Behind the garden I have in pots a new Isis candy and Beefsteak tomato, a grape tomato that is in production and Poamoho beans that I left pods on to make seeds. The garden is an oval shape with three sections. The overall dimensions are roughly 16ft x 8 ft oval.

Weeds are everywhere.

[imafan26]

I just picked three Suyo cucumbers. They were still crisp and sweet despite their size. The thorns were a bit prickly though.

[applestar]

Looking GREAT! I can't get over how I don't recognize most of the vegetation (and weeds!) in your photos except for the vegetables.

[imafan26]

I know I have a wild solanaceous plant we call papolo berry. It can be used for dye and the ripe berries are edible.
http://www.gardenguyhawaii.com/2012/09/ ... plant.html
I have a lot of bindweed, wild bittermelon, nut sedge, milkweed, California grass, Fukien tea, asparagus fern, syngoniums have gone wild, sanseveria, pigweed, escaped black bamboo, guava, spurge, desert honeysuckle that invaded from the neighbor's yard, African tulip and allspice also from the neighbor's yard. Grass is a weed in my brick patio and around the garden edges. I used to have Emerald zoysia in the back yard. I have some volunteer tomatoes, begonias, clover, wild amaranth,beard grass, kylinga, sleeping grass, swollen fingergrass. The St. Augustine grass lawn is nearly if not dead, but the grass is invading my borders. And these are just the weeds I can identify.
My rambler rose can travel quite a distance (15 feet) and it can be hard to reign that one in too, especially since it is a thorny proposition. The same is true of the bougainvillea and night blooming cereus that likes to go over the wall. It is hard keeping them at bay. If it rains they can really grow faster than I can keep up with them. the Kai Choy cabbages are all volunteers from last year. I planted the mustard cabbage to control nematodes and they have come back. So did the nasturtiums. I have a couple of weedy shrubs, I have no idea what they are. All I know is that they are really hard to kill.
Almost all the vegetation are weeds. The garden is surrounded by potted plants so there is also pineaple, a couple of fruit from the calamondin, green onions, and taro that are in the pots. There are more things there but I can't make them all out.

I capped off the sprinkler system in the back yard a while ago since there was more weeds than grass and the potted plants started taking up more and more space, so that only the weedy path remained. My back yard stays wet anyway since I have to water those plants almost every day.

I have weeded the garden multiple times, after a while I just plant right through them, otherwise, I will never get anything out of it. I pull the weeds I can get to, the plants compete with the weeds and if they are big enough, close enough and get taller than the weeds, they actually act as a living mulch. I interplant whereever I find space between plants and I don't really plant in rows. I do have to make sure things get along. I found out that kale and strawberries are not happy together and cabbage and okra were not fans either. I try to put the smaller short-lived plants in the garden and the bigger longer and longer lived plants in pots. There are some exceptions the aloe was supposed to be temporary, and the Jamaican oregano was in a pot, it is now through the pot and into the ground. I have some garlic chives in the garden as well but it is the most well behaved of the bunch. I have a few holes in the Brussel's sprouts but other than that, most things are doing o.k. and I have not done anything except put out a lot of slug bait.