Weedwhacker said:"Just being realistic here as I find myself struggling more and more to keep up."

I'm pretty sure quite a few of us here can relate to that!

Yup ... This year, I finally had to take a hard look at my garden and tell myself it's time to change the focus of my garden. No, I am not going to quit gardening, I just need to reduce the number of roses I am growing so that I only grow the ones I truly love and grow plants that like my soil and climate without my having to do a LOT of mulching and extra watering during the high summer temps when there is no rain.

I can't take the heat any more and I am tired of going out and gathering mulch material and hauling it home and then hauling it up the stairs to the garden. I need a xeriscape garden for a wet Mediterranean climate. Roses are not xeriscape plants, so it's time to do things differently and have more fun.

I've been giving away roses I do like, but don't love. Moving roses to two beds because they have different watering needs than the rest of the garden will have and am planning a garden that will be a lot less labor intensive for my older body.

btw ... I never wear my glasses outside, so I often can't see all of the weeds ...

I hear you on downsizing, Lyn.

So now we add that to perfect gardens...Looking at the garden in a mirror over your shoulder while you squint at just dark without your glasses....Look out Gorgeous Garden Perfect Plants Magazine...we are on to you

When the initial work is done, Lyn, I know you'll love your new garden and you'll have saved yourself a lot of work.
LOL, Jean!

Moonhowl said:I hear you on downsizing, Lyn.

So now we add that to perfect gardens...Looking at the garden in a mirror over your shoulder while you squint at just dark without your glasses....Look out Gorgeous Garden Perfect Plants Magazine...we are on to you

Better than Photoshop!

Lyn, that sounds like a good plan; enough garden to be able to enjoy nurturing it, not so much that it becomes torture!

Just read through 4 pages of comments and don't see any sign of Arico. I am one that will only try a plant twice and it's gone if it's a problem! I have over 700 varieties of hosta and don't have time for slackers or temperamental plant! We had a dead tree removed in one of my shade beds this spring, and the tree trimmer asked me why I had so many damn plants in my yard? I told him that I read somewhere that when you retire you're supposed to garden! He just shook his head... He was really careful to not hurt any of my plants in that bed, so he must understand a little bit! With the moles, voles, weeds and southern blight that always has to be watched for, I sometimes think it's time to start downsizing. But give up? Never!

I don't know, Rose. It depend on where you are gardening and on the plant. In this garden, it takes four years for a rose to establish itself because I am gardening in poor soil. No, I don't baby my roses. I don't believe in that. They don't get over-fed and this is a no spray garden. The reason I haul in the mulch is to maintain soil moisture in the high summer temps.

If a rose is disease prone, it doesn't belong in this garden. If it can't handle the heat, it doesn't belong in this garden. I know enough about roses that I am pretty good at selecting the plants that have a good chance of working, so I don't have to discard too many because of bad choices, but there have been a few.

Once a rose reaches maturity, it is so much easier to care for. The only thing I do differently in this garden is I give it an extra year to reach maturity. A rose can look like it is just sitting there doing nothing much for the first couple few years, but it is busy growing roots. Then WOW ! I jumps up and says, "Hear I am !"

I don't have a mow and blow guy, a tree trimmer or a housekeeper. It's just me. So, for me, the garden has to be fun. That's why I am making my change of direction. The roses will always call my name first, but I can learn to love other plants. I just want to have fun in the garden.

" I just want to have fun in the garden."
That's how we all feel. You're making appropriate changes. I've had to do that too. I'm culling things that just don't want to live without a lot of babying.

There is definitely a limit to how much one person can do -- at any age! As we get older.... well, most of us know where I'm going with that one

Boy, do I ever!

I think most of us agree, we'll never give up on gardening in general, it's just certain plants that we'll give up, after finding they are not worth the effort. But it's fun to have tried them. I tried a plum tree, this year I have fruit, but I'm going to try real hard to give it up. That plus a peach- not the kind of gardening I enjoy, not good yield for the space or work. Blueberries grow very well here, and are much more user friendly to the backyard gardener in my area.

I totally agree with "it's fun to have tried them," Sally! I'm afraid I love experimenting far too much to ever expect to have a "perfect" garden

But, when a plant ceases to be fun -- out it goes!

sallyg said:I think most of us agree, we'll never give up on gardening in general, it's just certain plants that we'll give up, after finding they are not worth the effort. But it's fun to have tried them. I tried a plum tree, this year I have fruit, but I'm going to try real hard to give it up. ...

A next-door neighbor has some kind of (ornamental?) plum tree. The fruit just drops on the ground, where squirrels love to bury the stones. I have plum saplings growing up through my very old, treasured Rhododendrons now. I can't really get down and go in after them, but have poisoned some and paid someone to go after the others.

This year, the competition made my best Rhodie barely bloom at all.

YMMV.

(This was a good year.)

Beautiful!

Thanks, Rosie!

RoseBlush1 said:

Yup ... This year, I finally had to take a hard look at my garden and tell myself it's time to change the focus of my garden. No, I am not going to quit gardening, I just need to reduce the number of roses I am growing so that I only grow the ones I truly love and grow plants that like my soil and climate without my having to do a LOT of mulching and extra watering during the high summer temps when there is no rain.

I can't take the heat any more and I am tired of going out and gathering mulch material and hauling it home and then hauling it up the stairs to the garden. I need a xeriscape garden for a wet Mediterranean climate. Roses are not xeriscape plants, so it's time to do things differently and have more fun. ...

We might have discussed this before, but I forget the reason irrigation isn't practical for you - distance from the hose spigot? And it does kind of contradict the philosophy of "no pampering".

With some help, you could run 1/2" irrigation mainline up the slope to your rose beds, (maybe under or alongside the stairs) and some dripline (maybe under mulch) for each bed. Then add a "twist-timer" at the spigot, and you can water without climbing the stairs. 1/2" mainline can be had for $17 per 100 feet, or $66 for 500 feet.

But I don't know any alternative to hauling heavy mulch, other than winning a lottery.

RickCorey said:Thanks, Rosie!



We might have discussed this before, but I forget the reason irrigation isn't practical for you - distance from the hose spigot? And it does kind of contradict the philosophy of "no pampering".

With some help, you could run 1/2" irrigation mainline up the slope to your rose beds, (maybe under or alongside the stairs) and some dripline (maybe under mulch) for each bed. Then add a "twist-timer" at the spigot, and you can water without climbing the stairs. 1/2" mainline can be had for $17 per 100 feet, or $66 for 500 feet.

But I don't know any alternative to hauling heavy mulch, other than winning a lottery.

Thank you for the idea, Rick. It's not about the watering. It's about the soil.

When I started this garden, my soil was dead. I could not dig a rose hole with a shovel. I could not dig a rose hole with a pick or even with a digging bar. It consisted of dense stones and clay. I started my rose holes with a pick and then was on my stomach prying the rocks apart making deep and wide holes. I didn't know enough to prepare whole beds.

Then I spent years hauling in animal manures, organic materials and improving the soil. Gradually, the soil improved so much that I had a lot of worms and could plant bulbs with a trowel. Of course, I could use a shovel. I kept bringing in more organic material each year. A lot of labor. The roses thrived. Then the drought hit.

I noticed the water didn't stay in the root zone long enough for the roses to take up moisture. Being very inventive, I figured out a watering method to slow evaporation above by using different mulching materials and to slow the drainage below ... I live on a watershed slope ... by pre-watering the day before I did my deep watering and didn't prune my roses so that they had less of a water demand. I knew they would abandon growth they could not support and I could prune them back after the drought. They all lived. The drought lasted four years in my part of California.

Last winter we got 40 inches of rain, a lot of it hard rain. The roses looked fantastic this spring. I went out and gathered a lot of leaves and shredded them ... much harder labor this year in my older body. When I pulled back the small wood chips that I used for mulch during the drought to slow evaporation to put down the leaf mulch, I found that all, well maybe not all, of that good soil I created was gone. There are no worms. I can't dig in my soil with a shovel. I can't dig in my soil with a trowel. Oops ! It all works in theory, but you cannot fight Mother Nature.

So, I am going to remove a LOT of the roses and plant a xeriscape garden, mulch with rock and gravel and enjoy a different kind of garden.

No, I am not going to quit gardening. But I am not going to pretend that building the soil is enough to have a garden that will last on this property. Gardening on a watershed property has some disadvantages that I had not anticipated. There will be another drought and I will be older. So, I might as well plan for that now.

This nursery's display garden's picture something like what I have in mind. Not exactly, but close ...

http://waterthriftyplants.com/...

Oh, no! The soil that you built up WASHED AWAY?!?

And it sounds like it wasn't even run-off erosion. The rain just washed it down and away through the cracks between rocks?

Yes ...

I've been writing to someone who understands geology and soil dynamics better than I do and he said that since the slope has a lot of underground streams and such, the crevices between the rocks and everything kind of slants downward towards those streams, not straight down, which also slope downward and all collect water to eventually feed the river below. That's a watershed. Of course, that is a very big generalization, but it gives you an idea of how nature is at work.

It's really interesting stuff, but it's not a war I am ever going to win, so I need to create a different kind of garden ...

One of the things I noticed at the beginning of this thread is that the happiest gardeners were the ones that seemed to be the most flexible. I've dedicated most of my gardening life to roses. I decided it was time for me to be flexible. There's nothing wrong with that. The joy is in the process of gardening, for me. Yes, I love my roses, but I do not like fighting a losing war with nature.

RoseBlush1 said:Yes ...

I've been writing to someone who understands geology and soil dynamics better than I do and he said that since the slope has a lot of underground streams and such, the crevices between the rocks and everything kind of slants downward towards those streams, not straight down, which also slope downward and all collect water to eventually feed the river below. That's a watershed. Of course, that is a very big generalization, but it gives you an idea of how nature is at work.

It's really interesting stuff, but it's not a war I am ever going to win, so I need to create a different kind of garden ...

One of the things I noticed at the beginning of this thread is that the happiest gardeners were the ones that seemed to be the most flexible. I've dedicated most of my gardening life to roses. I decided it was time for me to be flexible. There's nothing wrong with that. The joy is in the process of gardening, for me. Yes, I love my roses, but I do not like fighting a losing war with nature.

Well said!!

Knowing that one lives on a slope that has water running below ground into a stream or river makes one very attentive to what is added to the earth. Awesome responsibility to make sure the water is not "polluted."

I won' t give up---- most likely ---- but again this year I learned that if you do it, DO NOT EVER say I will get it next time.
I weeded my north garden and trimmed the tomatoes so it no longer looks like one giant bush.
I have been out in the heat and humidity enough this summer that that does not really bother me except I sweat so hard my shirt is literally a wet rag while due to allergies, and anti-allergy medicine is worse that just constantly blowing my nose, I carry a rag with me which gets so dirty I eventually prefer my shirt sleeve.
Anyway.
The north garden has been a lot worse but I had not paid attention due to other things to my south garden, which is three times bigger and has six times as many weeds.
Thankfully it had rained down there that morning. Now weeding in muddy black gumbo is not fun but the weeds came up easily.
My other half helped me for an hour, which I greatly appreciated but as I did it I remembered my dad saying if you plant the garden you are going to take care of the damned thing and part of me wished I had let it go but I remembered in the few years I did not plant the whole garden I still had to weed the WHOLE garden.

I weeded for five hours on my hands and knees, often sitting on my buttocks as my one knee will be fine till suddenly I feel something in it move. It does not hurt but I know I just screwed it up. It usually will be fine for another day or two and then just standing up is not fun.
I put getting as much done as I could, over common sense. I think probably due to the softness of the wet dirt so far my knee has not let me know how stupid I was. If it pops when I bend it a certain way I know I am in pretty good shape but when it does not pop it is a different story.
I got half of the vegetable garden done, but the rose and flower garden are still untouched.
I filled up one of the big green recyclable containers the city supplies and a big blue two handled container which used to be for bottles and cans. I quit till I can get back and finish as my other half said if I did not come I could walk back, fifty miles. (Many years ago, we go into it, in the car, about half way. I pulled over got out and hitch-hiked home.)
As they only pickup every two weeks, I may do as I have done in the past and dig a large hole in a bare spot where, for some reason, nothing came up is and bury them.
The weeds were mostly grasses and purslane although I have Canadian Thistles that are a moving problem.
I wrote in another thread that purslane helped keep the ground moist, well, in the rare bare spots the soil was wet but not muddy. Under the purslane some times it was genuinely muddy, water dripped off of my fingers but that simply made it easier to pull them up. If the ground were not wet, the Crab Grass would have been a serious problem pulling as even in the wet soil I sometime had to brace myself to get enough torque to pull the whole root ball.
I filled up the blue tub and dragged it over to dump into the big green one. I did not realize till I picked it up just how heavy that stuff was. I can still do one hundred pounds in a military standing press ten times but I struggled to pick it up and broke one of the handles off when I lifted it.

I figure IF I still put up with annoying situations like this I am probably not going to quit any time soon but I will consider quitting probably five hours for every ten I put into planning next years garden and next year I WILL NOT put off till another day what needs to be done TODAY.
----
As an aside, as I weeded, I could also squash the potato bugs that this year are very bad and I simply have not had time to deal with them.
Last year they came and went away I think due to a large presence of Lady Bugs but this year I saw no Lady Bugs and wasps and bees are few and far between.
On a warped good note, I think the potato bugs have actually killed or greatly reduced the yield of some of the volunteer potatoes that actually are more of an annoying weed than blessing, which with the fact I have waaay more potatoes than I will ever use, is kind of a warped blessing.