I am on a bicycling outing this weekend, or I might have considered going. I love it! Best herb festival I have ever been to. Take a little red wagon or maybe a bigger red wagon to haul your loot. :)

Moni

I agree - bring a hauler! Wagon, garden cart, some people bring the big rectangular laundry baskets. I've been to the Jenks one a few times, and it's always wonderful, so SS should be the same. Not going this year because I don't need anything (REALLY!!), but I wish I could. If only the yard was bigger...

Thanks so much for the hauler idea! Probably wouldn't have thought of it.

Until I moved I went every year. It's amazing. And yes, bring a hauler! You'll need it.

Tip on parking: park at the school and ride the shuttle over. They drop you at one end, you make the rounds and then head back and hop the shuttle. Beats trying to find a parking spot.

When you say hauler, I'm thinking wagon. Can you get the wagon and plants on the shuttle?

Even better, bring someone to haul the hauler.

LOL

I am laughing as I read this, but also lamenting that I live at the wrong end of the state to attend the wonderful herb festivals y'all have up there. I guess I'll console myself by going to Marshall Grain Company and Mike's Garden Center this weekend, and if it is too rainy to do anything at home, I might be able to drag Tim back to Rendenta's Garden and Green's Produce and Plants again. However, in order to do that, I need to finish planting the plants I bought there last weekend. My husband doesn't think it makes sense to buy more plants if you still have a bunch of recently-purchased plants sitting around waiting to be planted. Ha. You can tell he's not a gardener, or he'd understand that part of it better. I'm just glad he puts up with me and my quest for more plants. He actually suggested a trip to Mike's Garden Center a couple of weekends ago and I declined because it was race weekend at Texas Motor Speedway and I didn't want to get bogged down in that traffic since Mike's is on a highway used by folks going to the speedway.

Last weekend when we went plant shopping, I specifically said I needed herbs, and then I bought mostly flowering perennials and a handful of veggies. I don't understand how I come home without many herbs, but it gives me a perfect excuse to go plant shopping again. I did buy a beautiful Hill's Hardy rosemary. I already had Arp.

There are definite clues to non gardener questions/comments. Like why do need more mulch delivered when you haven't used all of the last batch. Or why hasnt this area been weeded it would be so oretty without weeds. Some questions I just walk away and hope my eyeballs dont get stuck. These come from my son and his girlfriend. She doesn't go outside unless it's absolutely necessary. They just want me to have a better homes and garden picture perfect place. Which I would if I could get a crew of 20 men here. Lol. I am proud of myself I handled all of the plants and cuttings as soon as I got home. Before I unloaded my suitcase even.

My husband keeps complaining about my "weeds". Anything growing is a weed to him. I just point out my "weeds" are cheaper than his video games.

Yes, Kim, I agree that non-gardeners don't get it, and they certainly have no idea how much work it takes to have a Better Homes & Gardens type picture-perfect place. Someday they'll learn. I try to keep the weeds down and the mulching caught up, but it doesn't take much to derail that effort. Number one is too much rainy weather where you cannot be in the garden enough to deal with the weeds in a timely manner, and number two is venomous snakes. Once the venomous snakes are outnumbering me in the garden, I grow very reluctant to hand weed anything because I plant closely with little bare space visible once the plants are a decent size, and you cannot just stick your hand blindy into a densely planted area to weed. I'd say most years my weeding ends in June. Better to be safe than snakebitten, and who needs a picture-perfect garden anyway. I just want a garden full of life, color and productive plants, whether it is neat or tidy or somewhere in between.

Congrats on getting all the plants and cuttings handled quickly. At least that way, you don't feel behind.

I've been weeding pretty diligently so the beds look pretty good except along the fencelines, and I never really win that war anyway.

I am so far behind I am the behind lol. I am going to dig holes prior to spring fling in my friendship garden just in case I bring something home. I left for one week ...it rained 1 1/2 inches...i have a few weeds, insert sad running behind face

Kim, the weeds are trying to over power my little beds, can't imagine dealing with your big place. Especially...I'm not sure if it's crab grass or quack grass. I know it's because DH blows seeds in the beds when he mows. This isn't coming up from below like bermuda. They are just little things on top of the soil. Fairly easy to pull, but there are so many. I wonder if he would mutter if I asked him to use the grass catcher. I've asked before, for compost, somehow it never happens.

Mine is mostly bind weed right now. I wish I could eat it then I would feel like I was getting some sort of revenge

At the Herb Fest today.

Now THAT'S smart! I'd be carrying my fat old lady, but I'll bet that fur baby is happy to help.

Genius!!

Kim, Well of course you have weeds. It is spring and it is raining, so weeds are gonna do what they're gonna do. Good luck getting them under control. I've been trying to stay on top of weeds by weeding daily, and it gets easier and easier each week as fewer and fewer new ones appear. That's a good thing, because I give up weeding for safety reasons once it gets hot and too snakey. At that point, the plants are lucky to get watered and harvested, much less weeded. Digging holes in your friendship garden in advance is a great idea.

My big bindweed explosion lasted about a month and there's much less of it coming up now, but it germinates sporadically the entire summer so I really have to stay on top of it as much as possible. It is one weed I'd stop and pull even in snake season, as long as it is in an area where I can see what is near it and know I'm not going to get bitten by a snake.

Amy, I fight several kinds of grasses like that at this time of the year, and I do try really hard to stay on top of them because if I ignore them, all of a sudden they are so big and so deeply rooted that I have to dig them out instead of pulling them out. Since our garden sits lower than the adjacent property next door, which along our fenceline is just a fallow pasture full of all kinds of stuff, all sorts of seeds wash in and blow in constantly. It drives me crazy, but it is what it is. The flower border right next to the driveway gets the worst of the weeds from runoff, and then the pathways and the lower end of the garden where I grow things at grade level instead of in raised beds also get tons of new soil and weed seeds washed in annually. I've been working on adding more raised beds at the lower end of the garden because that seems to be the only way to get a handle on the weeds, since the washed-in weed seeds cannot jump up into the raised beds.

Good luck getting your DH to use the grass catcher if he isn't already used to using it. Luckily for me, my husband is a tightwad. When I pointed out to him that if he caught grass clippings for me, we'd spend less money on mulch and would be able to make more compost (as opposed to buying bagged soil amendments), he became an instant convert to bagging clippings. This is one of the few times where his Yankee thriftiness (as he calls it) worked in my favor.

Dawn, What an adorable little dog! I hope you enjoyed the Herbfest. I've seen little dog saddlebags like that, and they often are advertised as a way for the dog to carry its own food and water with it. Maybe that is what this pup was doing...and then, after it had lunch, maybe it had space in those compartments to carry something else.

Did you buy any herbs?

Dawn