I did it again.
I let the weeds get away from me this spring. It's just so hard to get motivated to get out and hoe and pull weeds in January and February (yes, where we live, weeds can and do germinate and grow that early), even March, when it's so cold. And this winter, I'd convinced myself that I didn't care if the garden became overrun with weeds.
Well, come the beginning of April, I did care. I especially cared that the weeds were consuming all the nutrition out of my new-ish lasagna beds. They were also preventing me from seeing baby stalks of asparagus, the only food that will come out of the garden this season, that were sprouting up.
So I decided I would at least weed the asparagus area.
Here are the before photos. This first bed is supposed to have asparagus in it, but alas, last spring when I planted in the seedlings the organic matter in the bed hadn't composted fully enough for the roots to get established. They all died or were eaten by grasshoppers within a matter of weeks.
 |
Here, in the following photos, is the area again. After I weeded the two lasagna beds, my husband piled up some mulch inside them. Eventually, we'll add more mulch around the other asparagus plants as well, as much the existing mulch has turned to soil.
Notice how much easier it is to see the asparagus. Of course, there is a lot more growing now than when I took the first pictures, as it took at least a week for me to complete the weeding.
 |
| They're hard to see, but there are several tall stalks of asparagus growing in the bed in the foreground. |
 |
| Except for the dandelion, the green growing out of the mulch are asparagus stalks. |
 |
| SUPER hard to see, but there are a few small asparagus stalks growing in this picture. Most are purple. |
***********
Lesson learned: don't be lazy in late winter! I need to get out and hoe up the weed seedlings before their roots get established.
