The Battle of the Weeds

I love gardening .  I thought I was pretty good at it.  My garden the last two years looked like a giant weed patch and that was with LOTS of effort to pull and hack those stinking weeds out of the garden!  I wanted an English inspired kitchen garden, pretty yet functional.  With a fun garden on the side for the kids to destroy play in.  Instead I got this (and this is after I fought off a bunch of weeds!)

Yes, I know I have 4 kids under the age of 5, so it isn't as if I have all day everyday to work out in the weed patch ummm...garden!  And they aren't really old enough to be helpful, though the part of my garden this year with the fewest weeds is where the boys dig and last year every seed I planted didn't grow but every seed the boys helped plant did!

So enter LASAGNA GARDENING!!

I am making my lasagna layers around my plants this year but hope to build lots of layers at the end of the season so I have a full on lasagna garden next year.  Here is the basic concept: Put down cardboard, newspaper, paper sacks on top of the weeds; then pile mulch: hay, leaves, grass clippings on top of that; add your kitchen scraps to the top of that and maybe some manure if you can get your hands on any.  Repeat the mulch, kitchen scraps and manure.

The first layer will block sun light from the weeds killing the suckers, the other layers will turn into some wonderful compost to hold in moisture and fertilize your plants.  It is supposed to be less work (little to no weeding) and larger yields.  We shall see.  At the very least all the mulching is allowing me to make some headway with the weeds.  Previously I'd work and work to pull weeds and by the time I finished the second row the first needed weeded again and there were still 10 more I never got weeded!

My garden is still in the process but I will keep you updated through out the season.  I have several little gardens within my big garden this year.  I am inspired by square foot gardening.

We over did it on the tomatoes this year.

There is even a three sisters patch within our garden.

 I'll post more about each of them throughout the summer!

So, how does your garden grow?