Ghost Plants
I'm still building my garden beds. The soil has been dug a couple of feet deep with a backhoe, amended, and now I'm marking out what will be the beds and what will be the paths between the beds. I'm shovelling dirt from the paths onto the beds.
While I'm not out there actively shovelling, my dirt-yet-to-be-made-into-beds lies covered with a couple of sheets of plastic. This serves a couple of purposes. It warms the soil and it keeps the spring rains from making the soil too wet and heavy to dig when I get a chance to work in the garden. Kudos to my husband for this idea, it's working out GREAT.
This weekend I pulled the plastic aside and saw that some of the plants beneath had been killed and bleached. Above is clover, and below is ground ivy. I think it's cool the way the veins still show up so clearly. The ground ivy is worth a click so you can see the large version.
Labels: nature
posted by Leslie @ 12:49 PM
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8 Comments:
Wowser! That is cool. Just the black plastic sheeting did that?
Clear plastic, actually. They were regular green plants, and then they got sunburned and bleached out. These aren't plants that grew all pale in the dark. Glad you mentioned that, Pablo. It gave me a chance to clarify something I didn't express very well.
Wow! I've never seen anything like that before! That's amazing. It must have gotten really hot really quick under there. I would have expected them to wilt first, but those are erect as if they were still alive. Ghosts indeed!
Hope you get control of the ground ivy; that stuff can be pretty hard to get rid of. It can be as bad or worse than morning glory. I'm sure its all dead in that area, but if you don't watch it, it will invade from surrounding areas. I've been trying to get rid of it from my lawn for about five years.
Very interesting! I used to use clear plastic on my garden patches through the winter to kill the weeds, but I don't remember seeing this. Cool!
Now that is pretty amazing. I've seen etiolated seedlings before that have been covered over, but nothing as dramatic as that!
It was a good idea to cover things over for the weeds, and a lot of people would have just sprayed herbicides instead. But to keep the excess water out of the soil is a very good idea from your husband!
Ahh - well, that just goes to show I should read the comments first, especially where Pablo is involved. I'm just gonna have to try clear plastic too.
Great idea, Leslie! I will have to remember that for the future.
Have you ever dried flowers? It's one of my hobbies that I have actually turned into a little business...drying plants and creating pictures with them in antique frames. Anyway, those leaves would be beautiful in such an arrangement. Thank you for the inspiration! P.S. When do you get your chickens?
Garden art! That really is pretty.
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