Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's rainy and raw and has been for a couple days now. I like the rain, we need the rain, but I'd prefer if it rained at night not all damn day for days on end.

It's Wednesday and no sign of itchies from Sunday's major poison ivy grubbing event. The decon procedures seem to have worked. So what if they involved running through the house nekked from the washing machine in the basement to the shower, we're all family right? I'm not sure if it was the super careful covering up or the Tecnu showers or the combination but I'm glad no one is scratching three days later.

We did manage to get all the roots out of the area I want to place the new vegetable beds. It took several hours and we filled seven contractor sized garbage bags with roots. Yeah you read that right seven bags. We also found the mother root attached to the old tree stump I had put the compost bin over to rot it. It was one scary monster and had made a hole for itself at the base of the tree. At least it explained why there were so many poison ivy runners to pull, it had been there a long time and had a very large root system to try to survive with. Now it's dead, dead, dead and rotting in big black garbage bags until I figure out a safe way to dispose of it all.

There's still some plants left but they're far enough away that we sprayed with roundup and will just rake everything back to dirt this weekend to pull up those roots. We're going to smother / solarize the next large section of the yard we want to add to the garden. I got 2,000 sq feet of 6 mil black plastic to lay out over it once we've removed the big stuff and mowed. I plan to leave it until next spring so if the summer heat doesn't get everything the lack of light and water will. Next year we'll just get a truckload of fresh earth and cover the whole dead area. I'm planning on grape trellises back there and a few more raised beds.

The hardening off of the seedlings has begun. I've planted out the peas and cucumbers already but we have to finish leveling and setting the last two beds before much more can go into the ground. Hopefully we'll get to that on Saturday.

I also have to make a new plan for rotting the stump. If we missed any of the poison ivy roots they'll love trying to grow up into the bin so I think that's going to have to get smothered as well. I'm going to mound dirt over the whole stump then cover with plastic topped with mulch before I put the bin back. A couple holes in the plastic right over the stump should let enough water through to encourage rotting without encouraging anything to try and grow.