They are out of control! Voracious, sprouting, insatiable…weeds! I wished and wished for a mild summer, and I have gotten what I asked for. Though, I didn’t expect it to be so wet, but I guess a mild summer in a semi-arid desert is generally that way because of a wetter season. Along with a mild summer, we have had quite the battle with the weeds in the yard. Sure, our garden plants are growing well, but I feel like the weeds are outpacing them. I think we need a tad bit more heat for the vegetable plants to continue to take off and really start beating the weeds.

Like all things in our yard, we are once again learning. With the new beds, there is so much ground to deal with. Last year was our first year growing in the new garden beds, and it was so hot that weeds weren’t really our problem. Now they are. So we are learning. The biggest thing will be the future use of landscaping fabric to help keep down the weeding time. Our corn, squash, cabbage, broccoli, cucumber and sunflower areas will all have a ground covering next year to help keep the weeds to a minimum and save our backs and fingers from hours of plucking!

Here is a visual progression of the last 8 days:

JUNE 3 – Photoshoot of the plants

JUNE 5 – First big weed of the season

June 13 – Just over 1 week update

The asparagus patch is quickly getting filled in once again by weeds. Still patiently waiting for my crowns to come up. This bed is going to be a disaster the rest of the year. Constant weeding incoming!

The Cabbage & broccoli are filling in. They just need to get a tad bigger and then they will generally suffocate any weeds beneath their large leaves.

The onions, carrots and beets are once again filling in quickly between the rows and between the vegetables with incessant weeds. At least those plants have grown quite a bit in the last 8 days so the plucking of the weeds will be a little easier and a little less delicate.

The cucumbers so far are bigger than the weeds around them, but it won’t be long before the weeds start growing taller and start to take over.

The corn has a carpet of green between the stalks. Those will need to be cleaned out before things get too much more out of hand.

Also within the corn some of my other plants have started sprouting. Unfortunately, I have forgotten what I planted where, so it will be interesting to see what develops. They are either butternut squash plants or cantaloupe plants. Either way, I am happy that they are starting to come up after the second seeding.

This last weekend we also finally tackled the fence line where our old run used to be. Unfortunately, I didn’t get grass seed down…and wouldn’t it have been the perfect year for it! So instead, we have lots and lots of weeds. We did manage to get a lot of it pulled up, but we also had to battle a large ant colony, so it isn’t as clean as we would have liked. Maybe I will still get seed down yet….

On another note, lots of our plants are doing great. The driveway strawberries, or our oopsie strawberry patch is thriving for another year. These strawberry plants grew out of a pot and planted themselves into the driveway years ago. Since then, there is a little patch that has thrived along the fence line. We leave them be, and they give us some delicious little candy-like berries.

The rhubarb plant is HUGE. I keep pulling stalks for fruit leather, stewed rhubarb, rhubarb cake, rhubarb simple syrup, etc, etc, etc. I may have to start sharing some of my rhubarb recipes! I love it though. I forgot how many ways you can use rhubarb. And all of them are so delicious.

The rest of our garden is also thriving. So happy to see the plants doing so well!

Hopefully my next post will be about our completed bottom portion of the last wall. It is technically a 3 part series that all link together, so I call it our last wall, even though we are working on it in sections. We should have part 1 of 3 done soon.