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| Borage - or bee bread - seeds itself. |
Soon after the old berry patch was removed and covered with mulch, the strands of grassy weeds began appearing through the mulch. We did not have enough cardboard to cover all the ground, so the living plants below the layer felt the warmth, call, and opportunities of sunshine.
Note - everyone has enough cardboard until an area needs to be covered.
I did not want to add anything to that area until the fall, so I decided to use two cover crops - borage and buckwheat. Both germinate and grow quickly. Both drop seed and start a new crop when given the time.
I scattered white borage first, and sprinkled berry patch afterwards. I was skeptical about the 50% rain for Saturday night. Buckwheat arrived in the mail, so I scattered those seeds over the same mulch. This borage grows fat leaves and buckwheat grows up, so they should get most of the sun and deprive the greedy grass weeds of energy. The ultimate plant is to have bully plants there exclusively, so grassy weeds will be thwarted without a lot of effort:
The front row is already well planted with Joe Pye.
The next row could be clethra, which will be Pye high in later years.
Back rows could be hosta, which can be eaten easily by rabbits but also very good at producing big leaves and tall flower spikes loved by hummingbirds.
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| Bees love buckwheat. |
