Problems and Solutions

I have been fighting an uphill battle with weeds! These are called marshmallows and have a huge tap root, almost impossible to pull up. I tried to hit them with a whipper snipper but the stalks where so thick the string kept snapping. Looking at them was really starting to get me down so I had to do something..........


I asked at the local fruit and veg shop if they wanted to get rid of some cardboard boxes and they were keen to off load them! So I set about just pushing the marshmallows over and putting cardboard over the top weighted down with bricks. This didn't look very good but was doing the job :) I just lay the cardboard right up to the plants that I was keeping.

I wanted to put a mulch over the top to cover up the cardboard but recently I had been to hear ted Brown from the Wimmera Native Plant Nursery
and he mentioned that during the Horsham fires on Black Saturday organic mulches like bark chip had caught fire and being light had blown with the huge winds into spouts and stuff so I wasn't keen on that! He said that pebbles/rocks can make an attractive mulch and water passes through, it doesn't break down. I rang the local concrete place and ordered a tonne of 20mm rocks. I took in my rickety old trailer and the guy put less than a tonne on cause he was worried about me making it home! I loaded wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of rocks and carefully covered up the cardboard. I think it looks fantastic!

I have used all my rocks up now and have only down one side of my front garden down to and around my frog pond. I will start to lay cardboard on the other side on the weekend. As it was Mother's Day on the weekend gone I took my Mother in law to the Wimmera Native Plant Nursery and stocked up, I have a lot of planting out to do :) I'll show you guys more pics when I finish the other side!