My garden is hitting it's stride. Onions are growing well, beans coming up, potato's getting huge.
Oh, but there's an issue. My seedlings/plants are doing well, and so is the grass and weeds. Please stop growing!!
We put this garden in last spring, tilling up all the grass, adding soil and amendments to it before planting. And the grass and weeds still took over. To be fair, I tend to be a lazy gardener, not such a fan of weeding. And I REFUSE to use chemicals in my garden, which means it's hard labor or nothing.
This spring, I tilled it twice before planting, and have been far more faithful in dragging myself out there to weed. But the grass is creeping in and trying to reclaim the space. PLEASE STOP GROWING! I was hoping, against hope, that because of the tilling and work last year, that there wouldn't be as many weeds. No such luck.
So, if anyone out there has children that need to be punished, send 'em my way and I'll have them weed the garden. Or maybe I'll find an excuse to force my kids to do it (but I'm afraid they would "weed" all my good plants out if I did that). I'm praying for a miracle to kill those weeds, but I think my solution will be just doing it myself. shucks!
Oh I know...weeds LOVE my garden too! And I am scared to have my kids help until veggies get too big to mistake for a weed. Do you mulch? It helps...a lot. We use straw, but you can use wetted down newspaper and also thin cardboard like cereal boxes, etc, and lay them between and around and wet them and they will stay put and they'll compost too. Just till them in later. The handle on my how was broken and short. I about killed my back hoeing last night! Finally hubby put a longer handle on it. I still need to get back out there today - now that the seeded things are getting bigger I am hoeing and mulching directly around them.
ReplyDeletehmmmm....that is very tempting, but the grass (which is the WORST) is growing right into the peas. I'm afraid I'll kill off the peas with the grass. But, I think I will try that in late fall and over winter. Now if I can just remember that long!
ReplyDeleteDO NOT TILL! When you till your garden you are helping bringing old weed seeds to the surface to germinate. It is even worse when you have grass because grass sends out rhizome runners that when you chop up and incorporate will then sprout roots and keep right on going! I am having the same problem and I have found two solutions that sound promising so you may investigate and find that one of them suits your needs! 1) to deal with existing weeds, black weed fabric smothers them and helps 2) google "lasagna gardening". Oh, and also cover crops [over the winter](especially legumes) help to fix nitrogen in the soil, keep out weeds, and make a great "green manure" in the spring.
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