The great weed-out of 2009

It has come to this, my friends. Time to weed the garden. I have my trusty hoe, and a wayward child that needs punishing (since no one sent their kids on over, I had to use my own).

First things first, teaching the child what is a "plant" and what is a weed. Annnddd, I am reminded that I really should make the boy come out to the garden more often. He has no clue what a potato plant is, "potato's are a root...they don't have leaves", misidentifies the onions as radishes, and thinks that carrots don't have any greenery at all. I said "I suppose you think vegetables come from the grocery store?" Nope, they come from Wal-Mart. Kill me now!

Second, keep a close eye on said child so he doesn't step on the plants that I DO want.

Third, make sure he actually is weeding, and not just complaining about weeding. Yeah, we have very different ideas of what "done" is, in this case.

But, on the plus side, with both of us working, after about an hour, it was done (at least, as done as it is going to get right now).

Looks much better. Thanks for the help, son. Hope you learned something! (Really, the lesson was "if I had gotten better grades, I would have gone on the school outing instead of being stuck at home with mom, weeding!" Hope you learned it!)

Weeding (or grass is taking over my garden!)

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!