The Weeds Were Taking Over

This has been one wild year for my garden. It’s been my inaugural year of gardening and I’ve already learned so much from this experience. I wrote about the two-day process of creating my garden about a month ago in the posts My Garden in the Making (Part 1) and My Garden in the Making (Part 2). Not only has it rained nearly every day this summer in Ohio, but shortly after getting my garden going my family took off for our two and a half week journey to England. So, in case you were wondering what a newly planted garden with zero maintenance during a rainy summer looks like here is picture of what we came back to:

If you look closely you can see that among the overtaking of the weeds therein lies some actual vegetation-bearing plants. It would be no easy task to clear the weeds from my newly established garden. In fact, I was struggling as a newbie being able to distinguish weeds from plants so I invited my friend and gardening mentor, Katy, to come and take part in the reclaiming of my garden.

My biggest fear going overseas was that all of the plants that I started back in March and had become pretty attached to would die from either lack of water or too much heat. Luckily, it seems as though all of those transplanted plants lived and I gained some more vegetable plants from the seeds my daughter and I scattered only days before leaving. I wasn’t extremely hopeful for the seeds I planted so that was a welcomed surprise.

After about an hour in the sweltering heat Katy and I were able to clear a majority of the garden. We focused most on plucking the weeds that were next to the plants. We didn’t use manure or any type of fertilizer when creating the garden so the weeds have definitely begun to take over the perimeter. It’s a trick I’ve learned for next year for sure.

So here is a look at my garden now that it has been rid of the weeds that had so quickly taken over.

In this photo you can see the thriving cucumber plant in the middle. There are two budding pepper plants in the lower right hand corner. Over in the upper right corner of the photograph you can see the tall tomato plant. Katy showed me how to use the sucker limbs of the tomato plant to replant and hopefully multiply my tomato crop. The rows of smaller plants are the ones we planted from seed and they are a mixture of cauliflower, onion, and carrot plants.

I’m really excited to begin seeing vegetables ripen on these plants. I’ve never done any gardening in my life, but with a little hard work and attention gardens can be so beneficial.  My next step is bug dusting. I’m off to purchase some security for my plants. What a terrible feeling it would be to watch a plant grow only to be eaten by a critter or bugs. I’ll keep you updated as progress continues.