Sarah vs. the Weeds

This will be the last garden blog I'll bore you with for a while. Promise.

Last year's no-mulch-garden taught me a lesson. Drastic measures must be taken to avoid having one's garden overrun with weeds and grass. They pop up and spread quickly, far too fast for me to pull them all. The result is an overgrown mess of a garden that all the chopping and hoeing I can muster can't salvage. I was completely defeated and just let it go. It was not a pretty sight.

After a little internet research, I found an article that suggested putting down several layers of newspaper as a barrier between the soil and the mulch to discourage encroaching weeds and retain moisture. A couple of months ago, we started saving the Sunday paper to use as a liner. I purchased six bags of cypress mulch and after cleaning, tilling and planting, I spread out the newspaper section by section and covered it with the mulch. Besides tilling, I really didn't prep the soil much this year...so I know there are weeds and bermuda grass still in there under the blanket of paper and mulch. I just hope this strategy works. Surely it will at least slow down the weeds to a manageable rate.

Here's the half-planted/ mulched garden.

I couldn't help myself and bought two more heirloom tomato plants on Saturday, Cherokee Purple and Black Krim. So now our little garden has 6 tomato varieties, 6 jalapeño pepper plants, 2 cilantro plants, 1 banana pepper, 1 tomatillo plant. Salsa anyone? I have eggplant and green bean seeds germinating that I will have to add later. I felt it was too late to plant onions, but maybe I'll give 'em a go. I also really need a yellow squash or patty pan squash plant, but I'm going to have to work on that expansion before I can cram anything else in.