Tag Archives: making room to plant vegetables

Agapanthus is the Devil

another view of spider condoThis is 1/2 of our front yard.  The other half is essentially the same.  Small, square, dirt full of pea gravel, and filled with vigorous agapanthus and an unknown sprawling shrub that collects spiders.  I want vegetables and flowers like calendula, coreopsis, black eyed susans, grandmother’s pin cushion, marigolds, roses, and zinnias.

bare spot for vegThat bare spot used to have the other half of that clump of agapanthus in it.  Philip has not removed the rest of it as I requested him to do because it traumatized him.  So I planned to fill in the crappy soil with some fresh better soil and plant a couple of vegetables.

before with spider condo

But I’m greedy for space and this spider condo was on my hitlist.  I felt sure it wouldn’t be as hard to remove as the agapanthus.  At least I could grow more than one tomato if I removed it.  I hate shrubs like this.  They’re what you plant when you don’t want to actually garden.  They’re what you plant if you’re studying arachnids and need to provide the ideal environment to lure them with.spider condo demolitionI was right.  The shrub was just a great sprawling thing that was mostly dead and brittle underneath the top layer.  Its removal revealed a startling sight.

pure evilAbout half of the agapanthus clump behind it isn’t even growing into the ground.  It’s packed into itself in a crazy-ass impenetrable tangle of root and fiber and I got blood thirsty.

I will winI thought that not having to dig them out of the actual ground would make them easier to remove – I was terribly terribly wrong.  By the way, all the time I worked on chopping up the spider condo yesterday it was in the 80’s and I sweated like mad and it was awful and gross.  This morning was no different.

cramped tough rootsThat mess is all growing above ground.  It’s thick.  It will most likely break my shovel handle.  I’m using Philip’s burly digging bar which helps but my long held suspicions about agapanthus have been proved true.evil rootsAgapanthus is the devil.

Would you look at that gnarly mean mass of shovel-breaking root?!  It’s living off of itself, people!  No wonder they always plant this in parking lots of malls and institutional buildings.  This is a corporate strength plant.  It will survive balls of fire and lightning bolts of blight.

I had to come inside to hide from the stupid heat.  You have to actually hate yourself to dig a cancer like this out of your yard in 85° heat.  I may be temporarily defeated but I now have my sights set on removing the entire mass instead of just half of it.  And I intend to make Philip remove the rest of his too.  Because on the other half of our front yard we have THREE MORE OF THESE ENORMOUS CLUMPS OF AGAPANTHUS.