This weekend we got down and dirty in our yard, finally attempting to tackle the ‘Back 40’. Technically, this is about a 58’ x 6’ stretch of uncharted territory along the back of our yard, a large part of it formerly occupied by a row of overgrown privet hedges.
We dug out the hedges when we built our fence a couple of years ago—and with so much else on the go, just left it. Its only use has been as a depository for other plants we’ve yanked out of the yard and would like to relocate down the road, like the lilac bushes that we moved from behind the house before we started the addition.

We’ve had welcome discoveries after removing the hedges, like two really lovely peonies that are both thriving now, but mostly, we’ve been met with quackgrass and weeds. Lots of them—and two in particular that I have now made it my mission in life to thoroughly eradicate from my yard.

It’s not that these weeds are new to us, it’s just that they are relentless. And we gave them carte blanche to multiply faster than rabbits. They are both of the creeping variety, so they send out runners and show up wherever they bloody well please. In abundance.

The first unwelcome weed is commonly known as Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens). I have been digging this scourge out of my garden beds for years, and now I have a battlefield of them.
The second seems to be some inbred cousin of Creeping Charlie that we have named Creeping Crap (Crapperrenialus vulgaris). This one’s easier to remove from the garden beds, but is completely taking over my lawn.

So, pitchforks in hand, we are attacking the Back 40 over the next couple of weekends. Our goal is to completely remove every weed and blade of grass. Then, we’re going to cover the bare ground with landscape fabric and hope to heck we never have a repeat performance of this magnitude. Just today, we have about 20 bags of yard waste. And we’re nowhere near being done.
We’ll probably lay a brick path down the centre of this area once we get the growth under control, so I can cultivate the existing garden bed from both sides. What will become of the remaining ground is still up in the air, but I think there’s enough space for both of us to be buried back there.

technorati tags: houseblog, garden, noxious+weeds, renovation