Today was the first day I've been out in the yard all winter and I made some good progress. I raked up lots of errant leaves, filled up a dozen plastic trash barrels full of sticks (the yard waste truck came by 2x to empty them!), and, as ashamed as I am to admit it, I sprayed the lawn for weeds using "Weed Stop."
I hate applying pesticides, but my forays into total organic lawn care left me unable to control chickweed. I'd say chickweed (and violets!) are the main weeds in my lawn. This year I'm employing a different strategy and trying to spray for the chickweed earlier. I believe it will take a lot longer for the pesticides to work given that the temps are low, but that's okay. My thought was that if I sprayed the chickweed now while they are just tiny little rosettes closely hugging the ground that I will overall have to use less pesticides. In the past, I have waited until the chickweed was full out growing and required more spray to kill them. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to reduce my impact by addressing the chickweed problem earlier.
I essentially had to crawl around the yard on my hands and knees with my little pressurized hand pump to spray. (Oh, my aching back!) My normal backpack sprayer seemed like overkill since I literally had to squint at the grass to find most of the chickweed at this point. I'll report back on the results of this experiment later on in the Spring.
It got dark before I was finished spraying, so I'll be out tomorrow finishing up and then if the weather is nice I'll do my Spring application of corn gluten meal (WOW! Plus). I need to revisit the amount I'm supposed to apply because the grass is not especially green at the moment. I'm thinking I might not have applied enough in the Fall or maybe it's just ready for more at this point - I know nitrogen doesn't last long.
In other notes, my Camellia is getting ready to bloom, but it's not quite there yet. The daffodils have emerged and, oh, my hellebore has been blooming now for a couple weeks. This is the first year it's bloomed - the flowers are green.
Truth be told, winter is really the best time to work in the yard around these parts. Summer is too damn hot. So, I'm trying to get out there and do what needs to be done asap. Lots of pruning and other things on the list of coming attractions!
If the weather is nice tomorrow, I think I'll take some photos.
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