Ahhh, this is the first time I really really enjoyed cleaning off last year's garden debris!
Lots of brown-silver debris, some of it is still stems and some of it still standing. Me with my .... I think it's a cultivator ... it's not a rake ... raking stuff up the slope to a combined pile of stems, leaves, stems and leaves.
Rakes are really too unwieldy and I only have a giant plastic one, manageable only by men 6'5" or the Jolly Green Giant, and one iron rake. Iron rakes take all matter with them, including soil, and are pretty heavy themselves. I say no. The culitvator, however, left the soil behind and took the debris.
But what made it great was finding three more mullein volunteering out there. One we'd found last fall. I put three bricks in a protective shape around it.
These "new" ones, I got broken-off Aus branches (Aussie willow hybrid) and made these markers around each one. Basically just three sticks in the ground in an unnatural way, so I know there's something there.
Another reason I'm so thrilled is this: I can't plant mullein anywhere and have it work. So when I find a rosette of mullein, I mark it and guard it and never, ever mow it. Fortunately my housemates get this and they never, ever mow mullein.
We have plants volunteering here and there in weird places, and you know? So be it! We mow around them. Mowing is over-rated anyway, it may as well be more of a pain in the butt.
From the size of the rosettes, one will be tall this year, in it's 2nd biennial year, and the three others may just stay rosettes. But I don't know each one personally, so I guess we'll just find out later.
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