July 4, 2000
Deadheading and Weed Control with Paper & Straw 

                Well, we’ve finally gotten a break in the weather.  Warm without too much rain.  Now we’ll get to see how fast our tomatoes, peppers and other garden plants can catch up to the season.  At last, the hardest work of the growing season is behind us.  There are still seeds to sow for some of our later crops and some cute perennial or shrub seems to follow me home so there’s always some kind of gardening project awaiting me but, at least now I’m able to putter away among the blossoming fruits of my labor.  Most of the work now is grooming and pruning to keep everyone in good condition.  The lilacs and rhododendron have finished their flowering cycles, so now is the time to do any pruning that seems necessary.  Even if you have no need to prune, you should at least take a few moments to “deadhead” your rhodos and lilacs.  “Deadheading” is simply a term used to describe the process of removing spent flowers and seed pods from the plant.  When you remove the spent flower stems, you’re preventing the plant from using its growth energy to form seeds.  To the plant, producing seed is its primary function in life so it will expend a great deal of energy to accomplish this.  By pruning off the old flower stems, you signal the plant that it has not accomplished its goal and must try again.  Since you’ve prevented it from putting any growth energy into this year’s seed crop, it will respond by putting all its energy into next year’s flowering effort.  This translates into more vigorous growth this season and even more abundant flowering next year.  Remember, the time to prune and deadhead all your early flowering shrubs is just after they flower.  This allows them to produce more flower buds on the new growth that occurs over summer.  How well they’ll flower next year is determined by how much energy they’re able to store during this growing season.

                One of the more aggravating chores of the season is rearing its ugly head as the weather heats up: WEEDING.  As much work as soil building and planting can be, I don’t find them as annoying as weeding.  It’s like doing dishes, or mowing the lawn; a lot of work and when you’re finished you’re simply back to square one again.  No progress, just maintenance.  Since I have a lot of things I’d rather be doing, anything I can do to minimize the amount weeding (or mowing or dishwashing for that matter) is effort well spent.  I can get a dishwasher to wash the dishes, I can get a bigger lawnmower to mow faster, but what can be done about weeds?  Years ago, when I had my first vegetable garden, I was getting discouraged by the amount of time I spent hoeing and pulling weeds.  It wasn’t a large garden but, between work and other pursuits, I didn’t have time to devote to weeding (which I hated anyway).  Then, I read a letter in a gardening magazine about using paper and straw as a weed barrier in the garden.  It sounded great to me!  I laid the paper grocery bags on the soil to block out the sun and then straw on top to hold the paper in place.  It worked great then and still does (although I now must use the biodegradable leaf bags since paper grocery bags have gone the way of 8 track tapes and cars that you could maintain yourself).  Best of all, at the end of the season, the paper and straw can be turned into the soil, adding organic matter.  I owe a debt of gratitude to whoever wrote that letter.  They saved me many hours of weeding over the year; a task I can certainly live without.  Thanks for the read.