Here was the plan ..

Back in.. October last year the lawn mower shit the bed.. it conked right out and so with two more mowings left in the season I went without.. I could have gotten one then but I decided to wait and look and do an exhaustive search for the messiah of lawn mowers..   In the meantime I had to rake the leaves manually and sent them to the pumpkin patch for natural composting that takes the winter and really until I tilled the area I was going to plant in..  The leaves also would have last years pumpkins added and it all turned into this years top soil..  So.. Here is what the plan was going to be..   Getting the new mower on the 5th of May and using it on the 7th it has a grass catcher that would be used five times.. I think I said five whole times, that has turned out to not be true, I've used it more than I haven't..  The grass was grown at the 7 notch on the mower which is the highest because I read where the higher the better as far as grass to weeds ratio.. Supposedly taller grass drowns out the sunlight from reaching the weeds.. Wow did that ever work.. Well not really.. I mean it seemed like it might be working.. Except for one thing.. In previous years I could walk in the lawn and have no issues at all.. This year it felt like I was constantly walking on stickers.. I thought if I feel stickers then anyone else that walks shoeless will feel the same thing.. Those people are my nephews and my nieces girls.. Barefoot troopers all of them.. We must be related.. Anyway, ... First off

Last year or better still

Two years ago I though the weeds in the front yard were going CRAZY.. So I tilled them after labour day and got some grass to grow.. Well that was easy, turn the clock forward to last year and I had the area just next to the previous year looking weedy as hell.. I could have ignored the weeds except that they were the stickery kind.. So I had to get rid of them.. Last year I tilled the area   a few weeks earlier because of company we were expecting during the week I did that the previous year.. So it was around this time in August last year.. In other words the hot as shit time of the summer but no need to worry I have a watering system set to go.. I had been using a drip irrigation system all summer on other parts of the lawn and had moderate success getting the grass to grow.. Which is pure bull shit, my ability to get grass to grow was gone from the previous year when that section grew very sparingly.. This new patch would nearly not grow at all.. Too hot??  Too much sun??  I vote just not a smart time to try that.. And that failure has translated into this year not even bothering to try to grow grass that way..

This year saw me try to grow grass by way of patch growing.. Most times I would scalp the grass with the mower before but this year I tried to use the weed eater.. Scalping it to the dirt in areas of that patch in the front from last year, and areas in the back that were having troubles getting going this year.. This idea would work.. And then using the seed starter soil it would really help the grass to grow. Getting grass to grow and helping the weeds to NOT  grow.. That was the plan and it was working enough in a patch in front so that I would do weedy areas in both the front and the back..

So why didn't it work?? I was using a patch repair variety grass seed, and it worked in smaller areas.. But in bigger spots it wasn't.. So after that failure I mixed the patch fixer seed mix with the fall variety from last year.. The areas that this was planted seemed like they were in conflict and so maybe I had ten to twenty percent of the seed start.. Not a very good percentage ratio.. So.. That was the seeding that did and didn't work.. That last bit was done just before the 4th of July.. Then the start of August has seen me try good old fashioned lawn weed killer.. Trouble is there are red spots in the yard.. What's that about??

The garden was supposed to be .. not what it turned out to be.. Ultimately the ally planter was supposed to be tilled all summer.. Trying to get control of the weeds down there mom then said try the pumpkins there.. So I did.. Through the entries of this you can tell how that has been going along.. Same with the gas meter tomato plot they were supposed to be there because there were weeds growing there and very healthy I might add.. So this year let's try tomatoes.. That has worked extremely well.. Keeping them the same variety was the idea with them growing so close to each other.. Instead two roma variety were there and a moby grape.. My fear was the moby grape would take the top spot but they seem to be growing the way they are supposed to be.. the moby is moby and the roma are roma.. No cross polination.. The other tomato behind the bench .. I can't tell what it is going to have tomato wise.. they are turning and as you know they are a krim variety which means they don't just turn red, but a deep red, nearly purple by comparison to the more orange/red of any other variety.. I have some turning now and they really look funky..  

Setting wood under the pumpkins is supposed to help keep them from rotting on the vine.. The jury is still out on this.. I am using some of the branches cut to size on most of them.. The pumpkins in the ally are getting the ends of the vines run over by vehicles going through there.. There really is no place to put the vines, I have tried and they want to go that way.. Well suffer the consequences then.. My fear is that people will see the wood or the branches and think I'm trying to make it to where people will run into the pumpkins and ruin their cars because of the wood situation.. That isn't my intent but if there is an issue there then I will destroy the plants to prevent idiotitiss from taking control of the situation.. 

So far so good..

Badge Henry