Vacuuming the Strawberry Patch Clean
22nd March, 2010 - Posted by Scott - No Comments
Yes, that is yours truly standing among the heavily mulched strawberries with a shop vac. What isn’t obvious is why: the several pounds of gravel that was tossed into the bed by the snow plows. In past years we might find a few stones or a chunk of asphalt tossed into the front yard, but this year was much different.
Shortly before winter came, PennDot tarred and chipped our road in an effort to resurface without laying a completely new road surface. It was effective until the unprecedented storms that came through this year. Every plow pass tore up a little bit more which wound up in the yard.
As the snow began to melt I had a nagging feeling that I should get out and shovel off as much of the gravel tainted snow from the beds, but as with most of my efforts, those thoughts turned into action a few days too late and I was greeted by a mess of stone and straw. Pulling off the straw in sheafs was an impossibility; the stones poured through it like water through a sieve. Taking my wife’s audible musing, “I wonder if the shop vac will work?” to mind, I was pleasantly surprised that it did.
However, it is no quick feat. The dust from the stones and the dirt clogs the filter after a few minutes and the straw will occasionally get stuck in the nozzle, but it picks up mostly the gravel and left a fairly clean surface. The lesson learned? Don’t be afraid to take power tools to your garden to get the job done.