I'm in New England also. What bugs me is the ability of weeds to mimic looking very like the good plants and to grow right next to or through them. How do the weeds know to do that??!

Time. I never seem to have the time I want to be able to do some gardening.

Admittedly, there are some times I DO have the time.... and then floral's issue hits me...motivation lol. Of course, once I drag my butt out there I wonder why I didn't come out three hours earlier....

Gotta agree with Roxanna on those weeds too. So many of them look like "something" when they're little and you leave them just in case...

:)

Dee

Pesky things keep interfering like house painting, oil changes, plumbing repairs, reading garden forums...

tj

Irrigation. I absolutely need to figure out why it isn't working right before I go away this summer.

Voles moved in. Yesterday I discovered all the tomatoes except one, the peppers and bean seedlings were gone. This year I remember to use a repellant spray so deer did not eat all the blossom clusters off my Mayflower viburnum. In past years voles have chewed the bottoms off beets and carrots. They tunnel underneath. So this year my husband made me a raised bed with a hardware cloth bottom so they can't tunnel underneath.

Insects eating all my new plantings.☹️

Biting off more in the way of garden projects than I can possibly complete in a year. My project list for next year best be all of the projects that don't get finished this year.

Too short a spring planting season. This May we had cold and wet and then a sudden switch to days of dry August type hot weather. Then back to very wet and cold. Very few good days for plants to go into the ground and get established,. Now another heat wave is coming, Sigh!

Never enough sun!!!

I was out trying to garden between rainfalls yesterday and thought of this thread when I encountered another obstacle, one I'm surprised I didn't think of originally.

Roots.

Roots everywhere. Every time I stick a trowel or shovel in the ground, there are roots. Small fine one, heavier long ones, ones I have to cut with a saw. Ones that start to come up when I pull them, and are three feet long and still going, but then I pull and pull and it breaks and I practically fall over backwards. It's like the Three Stooges in the garden lol. Even in established beds. Even in my raised beds. I don't get it. Once in a very great while I get a break and there are only rocks when I dig, but usually it's roots wrapped around rocks. What I would give to be able to just once dig a hole and not have it be a three-hour ordeal!

:)

Dee

Same here, Dee only it's rocks, tons and tons of them. It's a good day when I can plant a gallon sized perennial and not hit any. I keep a pile of soil on the property just to contour and fill in depressions left by large rock removals. I use them to edge gardens, build walls, and there are still piles everywhere.

Sue

Having to deal with the large amount of garden refuse that is generated from cuttting things back, pruning, deadheading, weeding, etc. There is way too much to compost. I take some to the dump, some to our burn pile but it is time consuming and requires planning and logistics. How do others deal with all this stuff?

Sorry PRN. We have enough space to have a large dump pile that gets weeds and prunings.

Dee, I had to abandon one veggie bed because it was too close to our best maple tree. Even beyond the drip edge, the roots were making a mess of the bed.

Rocks! We are living in what used to be my husband's grandparent's house so when we first moved here my husband made an effort to remove the big rocks that were always a problem when he used to mow for them. But some are just too big. And darn it, every once in awhile I find a nice rock that I might be able to use. Last year my husband removed a rotted board edging a narrow border that needed a bit of "retaining" due to the slope. He replaced it with a nice and simple rock edge. What a beautiful difference.

I need to mention occasionally that he needs to do weed whacking. I'm scared of it although I tried to learn how to use it. I think if he keeps the edges trimmed around my vegetable beds, the quack grass doesn't seem as aggressive about infiltrating the beds. I'm trying to keep a trench around the beds, too.

Yes, sorry, PRN, I compost most stuff and the stuff I don't want to compost (grasses or weeds with seeds, etc) I throw in the woods between my and my neighbor. Guess I'm lucky enough to have space to do that. Do you have any kind of municipal compost facility where you could bring your stuff?

Defrost, those roots and rocks (and roots wrapped around rocks!) are horrible, aren't they? I'm thinking I need to totally dig up and replant a small bed where my hostas are getting smaller and smaller. I'm thinking its those really fine roots - I don't know of what, lol, but there are masses of fine brown roots entangling everything.

I once tried to move a rock that jutted slightly out of the ground where I was trying to put a rustic stone path. It was only about an inch out of the ground, and about six inches in diameter. Turned out to be huge. Massive. My neighbor even came and tried to pull it out with his pickup truck after we dug all around it. Nothing doing. The neighbor (more persistent than I was lol) finally came over with a mason bit on his drill and shaved the rock down so I could lay my flat stone over it! Yay, New England!

:)

Dee

Slugs and snails! ive already killed at least 40 today and that was just a drop in the bucket ( or the container of salt i carry).

My aging spine...

The very short growing season overlaps with too many other fun things to do. Summer in a tourist area is a flurry of six months of activities packed into only three months. There's barely time to breathe. I've got to learn to "accept" the garden and stop stressing about how many days will pass before I can tackle the gargantuan chore list.

I’ve been thinking about Dee’s ”roots” answer. So true. I have a bed which was started in 2016 but not finished. Planted more of it, and spent most of my time pulling out or cutting roots. Roots everywhere. More so that rocks, and I live near an old quarry.

Dee, we live in my husband's grandfather's house so when we moved here he decided to get rid of all the rocks he used to hit when he mowed for his grandfather. Lol, needless to say a backhoe was required and of course he found some that were impossible to dig up.

I attempted to start renovating my circle bed but too many roots. That awful vining weed with purple flowrs, maybe e a vetch, has a massive root structure. Goldenrod is easy to pull out. I don't think maple roots have reached this far. I'm going to wait until the shastas stop blooming and having my husband dig the whole thing out with the backhoe.

Deanna and defrost, honestly, it's crazy the roots and rocks we deal with! If I am going to plant something, no matter how small the hole I'll need, I bring out a spade, a trowel, a pickaxe, a pair of pruners and a lopper. I usually HOPE that a trowel will be enough, maybe a trowel and pruners. But even digging a small whole, I usually end up deciding a spade will be easier, because 90% of the time the first thing you hear when you put the trowel in the ground is the unmistakble sound of metal on rock, lol. So the spade comes out. Then inevitably after you cut through the finer roots you find the "mother" root lol, at least an inch in diameter. After wondering where the heck it comes from and what it belongs to, the loppers come out. Pretty soon, by the time you've removed the rock(s) and roots that were in your way you have a three foot hole to plant a plant from a three-inch pot and then have to find soil to backfill the holes left by the rocks. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, lol, but not by much!

The funny thing is, this happens in established beds, not just virgin ground. I had a friend who once swore that the thing that grew best in her garden were rocks. She called herself a rock gardener and said no matter how many rocks she removed from her garden there were always more that "grew" and just appeared, to replace them. I now think she was right!

:)

Dee

Lol, Dee, NH's nickname is the granite state.

Dee, considering that is the soil you have to work with, your garden is gorgeous! lol

Defrost - did you say '....with the backhoe.'? lol Wow, great to have a backhoe on hand. Makes a lot of sense when you have a whole bed of ridiculousness!

Yes, my husband has an anciet backhoe. it came in handy when he had to dig a trench to put a water line out to my vegetable garden. The driveway is almost next to the house so i had to drag hoses across the driveway and it took two lengths to get to my garden, now I have a yard hydrant.

defrost I'm insanely jealous lol. My driveway is directly next to my house (the asphalt literally touches the foundation). My spigot is on the side of the house furthest from the driveway, so I have to drag the house across the width of the house, across the driveway, and across the side yard practically to the neighbors lol, since most of my garden is out there on the boundary, where the most sun is. Can't tell you how many hose connections have had to be repaired because they got run over lol. I would love to have a backhoe to dig a trench to run water, to clear some wooded and scrub patches, etc. Maybe when I win the lottery....

Thank you PM2! I can try to make it look good in pictures lol!

:)

Dee

Ancient backhoe that works .... priceless! :-)

Dee, We all try to make our gardens look good in pictures.[g]

Dee, that post is hysterical and deserves a bookmark! It should be included in a primer for all beginning New England gardeners. Everything about it is SO TRUE! As for the huge void that has to be filled after the roots and rocks are gone, that’s why there’s compost and peat, etc. That must be why some of my plants are so happy. Does that mean I have to be thankful for the rocks and roots? Oh, no!

Lifting a glass to all you other rock gardeners!

Backhoe works, brakes don't. LOL Dee, wish I could offer an inexpensive solution. Our driveway is gravel so it could be dug up. Anyone got a reasonably priced used sky hook?

WOODCHUCKS

This is an old post but fun to re-read.

Dee if you've had the patience to re read the whole thread I want to ask if you have locust trees on your property. Your description of the roots that never end sounds just like "my" locust roots.

Recently I decided not to remove one that's in a bad spot. When you disturb the roots or cut a locust down it sprouts 50 little locusts from the winding root system. It is not worth the trouble.

They wrap around rocks, other plant's big roots.

Farmers used the wood for fencing because it is very rot-resistant. It makes nice high dappled shade. And makes for a PITA when you want to clear the soil for something else.