To clarify, I do hand weed IN the beds, this is just for around the beds. I only got some of the paths mulched before summer hit and the weeds went crazy. So the side of the garden where I got the mulch in has some weeds, but not a lot. The other side...the weeds are rivaling the okra in height. And the okra is doing great. I already tried glyphosate, but it didn't do much. It was 41% though, not the 47%. I will get some ammonium phosphate too. Once the weeds are beat down a bit I will cover and mulch the rest so hopefully this doesn't happen again!

i am 20 miles north of the OH border ... there is a chance i am south of you ... supposed to be near 100 today [heat index]... i will be watering all day long.. when i am not scrubbing the sidewalks and porches for the tour .... sounds like a wet day ... otherwise i will be in the beds.. having the blood sucked from me.. trying to make every label viewable ... i water during rain ... more is always better .... blue is a wax ... hot days.. with rain to follow will remove the wax ... i have drip.. so overhead watering is not an issue ... my blues do last longer... but still green up by late july/august ... so it sounds like you are just ahead of the season in that regard ... every year is different.. i bet with all that rain.. they will be bigger next year ... just make sure they get plenty of water in root growing/food storage season.. which is late july/august ... ken

Sometimes I like to dig furrows in a shady location. Long trenches about a shovels depth. Heeling all the plants into the trench and slightly covering them with soil. If for any reason an emergency comes up I have taken the responsibility of creating a nursery to baby-sit my root stock and help the excess foliage wanting to wilt. Do this to warm up youre muscles when calm and the morning hours are still cool. You'll thank yourself if the weather turns hot and plants that you couldnÂt get divided and transplanted for another day or two were left to bake. Summer is here. In this way you can set the pace of work. DonÂt let the garden dictate when you are needing to rest the body. By preparing this way you can retire early and prepare dinner or tend to aching muscles. Gardening can be enjoyable with the heeling of plants while renovating large beds. If you need to quit in the middle of the project for a few days time you add more soil literally planting the heeled plants. Water them heavily. Just be neat when trenching. Clean work is rewarding when in a rush at the end of a long day. Keep all the soil piled neatly along one side of the trench. So it can be pulled back easily atop the plants. At least this will give you time if preparing new beds means cultivating unexpected hard soil. Sounds odd but I sometimes keep a kiddy pool full of water. So I can wash out the soils of tuberous roots and divide them rapidly. Once again if IÂm leaving for an emergency plants like Triadescantia Spiderwort (IÂve never spelled that one corrctly)Â.you get the idea. Some plants can sit in water for a week. Happy and able to keep thier foliage strong. When IÂm working with woodland types such as Trilliums, Gaultheria, Troutlillies, Bloodroot, Solomons Seal, Jack in the Pulpit, Ferns, etc I have a low dividing and or transplanting death rate using the pool with enough cool water out of sunlight . Some of the old gardens IÂve worked in have these woodland perennials as part of the gardens content and they are the aristocrats of pampering.I work with them like a florist cuts stems underwater. Some needing a bucket full of soil from underneath a particular tree like a hemlock grove to be reworked into the new beds soil. Any way youre perennials are easier. The key in my opinion if you are designing on the whim is preparing trenches to heel youre stock in case of mental block or physical exhaustion. Make sure they are well watered for the week in advance if no rain is in sight. With very large rootstock perrenials I'll leave the hose overnight on a slow drip like run to soak the plant like a true rain would. That is for the ones I really like. Such as when Transplanting Japanese maples I use this method of slow soaking. That helps. I like to cut squares of burlap of different sizes. Many in fact. So I can place a perrenials rootball atop the square and lift the plant easily. Keeps the lawn clean also carrying around plants. Summer plantings can require unsightly wells for each grouping or individual plant. This will be invaluable come summer drought and heat. More so in Virginia. I keep a pole or thin crowbar and poke a few holes around the well as I water. Sticking the hose into the hole and soaking the soil from bottom up. Cinching the hose to limit the flow of water so as not to rush water out of the hole poked by the bar. Its slow but the air pockets get saturated with water. I never liked pounding the surface with water knowing the bottom of the plant might still be dry. This is great for kids to try. They love mudpies. And its a good way to reming plants need care and water. On another note: I spent my summers in Virginia with my mothers parents. My grandmother was a gardener and painter. She had to deal with those hot summer days and nights with that orange clay soil that would bake like a potters kiln. A big change from the North East garden she tended. Near Roanoke, Town of Huddleston across from Lynchburg. Smith Mountain Lake. Appalachian Power Company Dam Project. Virginia makes my heart ache. I miss her. Appalachian trial. Chatanooga River and North- South Carolina into Georgia. What a magical place. And the round bails of straw! Used to hide in those when the farmer would come chasing me and a friend occasionally shootin Rock salt from a shot gun. WeÂd be taking all his catfish from the cattle pond. To make up for his large sized stock weÂd put little ones from the lake into the pond. Mr. Wilkerson.Âs pond. Surrounded by hundreds of acres of Tobacco, Corn and straw fields. I donÂt know who the guy that was shooting was. Never really got a good look since it was always in the night. I still think it was the guy adjacent to the farm or down the road.. IÂd see him fishing the same pond during the morning daylight. I could recognize that hunched over back form from the night silhouette. We were a crazy pair of kids about fourteen years old.. Picking Tobacco worms off the plants all day., Placing Tobacco into the slated wood inside the barn to cure for pocket money. That stuff burnt a whole in my cheeks chewing it half dried. WeÂd pocket a bunch of leaves for the nights fishing. The closest store was an hours drive more or less. To far to walk. Pass time spitting.Cicadas and lightning bugs. I swore I caught more catfish spitting tobacco juice onto my chicken liver and bread. Sometimes the mosquitoes were so bad we would leave the poles and bury ourselves into the round straw bails.Falling asleep not realizing a light rain passed through. Untill a lightning crashed our sleep. Lightning seems to have a livlier personality while cruising across Virginia Farmland. Like its waiting to get you. After a while we kept one bail as our secret stash of fishing gear. Kept the cooler inside to. We were typical mischevious adventerous boys. But my friend was another local farmers son so at leat my Yankee butt had some protection. And he made sure I learned the local slang over those years so as to fit in. It sucked to come back to N.Y. where the kids never understood the finer parts of growing up. The better half of the English language. Southern accents made me feel like I'd live a longer life. That laid back tommarows a new day attitude. My N.Y. friends all went to summer camps. While I was living a summer like a by gone era. We even used Mr Wilkersons Outhouse. He had no plumbing and was a millionaire. He liked me. And for A while I hated Yanks just keep him from finding out I was a yank. Everyone including adults were afraid of him. He disliked the D.C. folk and New Yorkers buying up his lakefront land. His lots a few years later were fetching two hundred thousand dollars each. . Around 1992. He was smart and wealthy.But I wish to this day he could have kept his land. I saw the pain in his eyes to see the others moving onto his familly land. Guess me being a kid he adopted me as a local kid.I had the tanned skin and orange stained shoes to look like the rest. Along with the fresh cured tobacco hanging out of pockets. Never asking where I was from. Making me feel at home.Sitting on his front porch the local newcomers who bought his land were in disbelief to see me with him. They never spoke to him after the sale of land. But went rushing over to my Grandparents to rat me out. They didnt like most of the locals. But acted like fakes when face to face. Saying hello and being all proper. Funny how adults acted looking back at those summer months gone by. Mr. Wilkerson wanted nothing to do with those rude obnoxious people. And in that sense I felt the animosity still pent up from the civil war. He was honest. He let me know that the South still is proud and alive. A way of life. I felt what books couldnt ever teach. I was an impressionable youth. But my Grandparents were New yorkers retired on his land so I was fearfull to talk. I always just sat quietly. Looking out into the fields. Letting Mr. Wilkerson talk on the rare occasion. And I now feel like the luckiest kid from New York to meet Old Mr. Wilkerson who was a southern gentleman. I understood then how silence means being respectfull of the other persons viewpoint. I was silent out of fear. But I learned a southern viewpoint on Northerners buying up the soil his family and generations before had tilled. That must be like adding salt to old wounds. I miss the South. Hope my grandparents donÂt read this. My summers in Virginia were quite peaceful months to their recollection. Sorry for the lengthy post. Gardening is giving so many flashbacks of past experiences I want to let them loose. Ricky.

Oh man, I feel your pain! Bishop weed is notoriously tough to get rid of. I tried once, by removing the top 6" of soil, but it grew back anyway. I was glad to move away from it (incidentally, the BW didn't chase me away. LOL!) If faced with that plant again, I would remove the desirable plants and smother the whole area for a year, or 18 months if starting in the fall. Then uncover a small test area and make sure it's safe that following summer before assuming it's dead. Another approach could be to smother a new garden spot now, to move desirable plants to in the spring. Then smother the BW spot for as long as you need. I don't know how much space you have available, or what might sound better to you. I wouldn't use plastic though, just corrugated cardboard under at least 6" of organic matter. Might as well improve the soil while smothering, not kill all of the microbes. I would rinse the roots of the desirable keepers as each one comes out of the old bed. The smallest pieces of root from BW can stay alive, keep growing into a whole new invasion. That should also prevent the moving of tiny purslane (or any other kinds of) seeds into the new area, if that's an option for you. Totally agree, seeds don't go well in mulch, if they go at all. You might want to remove most of the mulch (if it hasn't yet decomposed) from a newly smothered area in which you want to have sprouting seeds. If it's been there through a winter, the cardboard should be gone. But, when removing mulch used for smother, be ready for other seeds that were in the soil to then be able to sprout. The first year of any new spot is the toughest, as the "bank" of existing seeds exhausts itself. If you can get through the first year of pulling stuff before it drops new seeds, sprouts of those plants should be dramatically less the following years. A hard border around beds can help keep grass out, and mowing with the chute aiming away from beds. Timbers, bricks, that kind of thing.