Get Out, Evil Wort

When we first moved to our Gig Harbor home, we thought the yard was lovely.

The view from the front door, April 2012

Beautiful blooming Creeping St. John's Wort, aka Aaron's Beard, May 2012

Another view of what we thought was a spectacular ground cover

Two years later, the plant really wants to spread.  We are spending lots of hours removing sprouts from the lawn and driveway.

The flowers in this rock garden had to compete with the wort spreading under the rocks.

May, 2014, the wort's last bloom

September, 2014 On the advice of a master gardener, we cut it all down and sprayed it,  but it kept growing back.

October 2014 We realized we had no other choice except to dig it all up.  Underground, we were surprised to find massive tangles of interwoven tubers.  There is no picture of the tubers because we were too covered in dirt at the time to handle a camera.  It took us a few months to get it all done.

May, 2015.  The wort is dug out, we have hoed and removed more sprouting tubers.  Let the planting begin.

Keith begins to create terraces and plant fruit trees

It is a slow process as we add some compost to each tree hole and continue to dig out wort tubers

Two trees watered in

Five trees watered in

More rock walls and terracing

The dirty work continues, all eight fruit trees planted

Adding some shrubs for more beauty

More rock walls, with rocks scrounged from around the yard

Another view of our future orchard

Not done yet, we get a load of bark delivered

After laying down black landscaping fabric to prevent the wort from regrowing, we start spreading bark

One wheelbarrow load at a time

O yeah, we stopped so that Keith could fell that big fir tree

Timber!

Then, back to spreading bark

More bark, more rock walls

Starting to look more finished

Laying that fabric really slowed us down, darn that wort.

Almost done

No, not done yet.  Now we have to put in a fence to keep the deer out.

First the fence posts

Then the gate posts and the gate

Then, the fencing, deer netting, very irregular and weird to work with

Keith hangs the gate, I get the easy job of painting the posts

Are we done yet?

Yeah, we're done

A fenced in orchard,  good-by invasive wort, a year's worth of hard work.