Free Overgrown Goodies

I’ve got two elderly neighbors who are always calling me up asking me if I want this plant or that plant.

One has lived on his 2 acre property for 40 years and is the ditch boss so it’s awesome to be friends with him! He gives me so many plants I don’t know what to do with them! Just the other day he had me dig up some of the overgrown black raspberries that were growing into his vegetable field. They are delicious when they’re fruiting but just canes right now. He stood about 12 feet away and directed me to the plants. His soil is so thick and soft and fertile it’s AMAZING! And it took only one scoop per plant to dig them up! His trick is that he’s been taking yard waste (grass clippings, leaves, and other mulch from landscapers for YEARS and spreading them over his field.

I planted them along the fence in the hazelnut orchard. Not exactly thought through but it was so spur of the moment I had to get them in the ground.

Then my other neighbor called me up. She’s a rose connoisseur that’s lived on her acre for 25 years but her old antique 1918 roses had gotten into her prized Japanese Tree Peony bed and had to be either killed or dug up and moved. She’s wanted me to take these for a while and I finally got over there and dug them up. She is very against mulching. She thinks its very ugly instead she gets pallets of organic compost delivered each spring and lays it and fertilizer around all of her plants. And she “bics” her grass so short you wonder how it survives at all. A very different gardening style then Farmer Greg down the road. Digging up those roses was quite a bit harder despite the good soil it was much denser than Gregs. And these plants were very well rooted. After about an hour of hearing about her grandkids from a 6 foot distance as I dug I finally finished and dragged my wheelbarrow home.

My bounty!

And then I planted them... some of them... as I was too tired to finish all of them...

She’d probably have a cow about the weeds that I let grow behind them on the fence but I didn’t have the energy to pull them and unlike my neighbors I just can’t bring myself to use the herbicides they tell me are life savers. It’s true they don’t have as many weeds as me!