Weeds, weeds and more weeds!

At my other house, I thought having a bit of garden was great. A few flowers, some veg and herbs, a back patio with fire pit, and look how nice my backyard is. This was also the initial thought I had had when moving to my Small Town. I have a much much bigger backyard, that came with much much more garden. 2300 square feet of garden to be exact. This means A LOT of area for growing of the above mentioned items.

You saw the nice flowers in my last post, but alas, this is not the way the entire yard and gardens look. Oh no, not at all. The rest of the garden seems to have been taken over by Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety. For the last few weeks I have been pulling weeds and pulling weeds and pulling more weeds. I have been trying to get them out by the roots so that they Will Not Return. I am not sure how well this will go, or if the Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety will win. I have now worn a pathway from my driveway to the local compost site with the pickup truck. I hope that they can make the weeds and their seeds die a painful death.

Here is what the 2300 square feet of garden started out looking like. You may not see them, but in these pictures are full-grown peony bushes, coneflowers, raspberry bushes, and a yucca. I know they are there, I saw them last year when I started out weeding. I then stopped, as I realized that I was probably pulling just as many flowers as weeds, so decided to wait things out and see what popped up.

In an effort to combat the return of the Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety, I measured the garden space (hence the knowledge that there are 2300 square feet) and ordered some mulch. Actually, more than some mulch. A Lot of Mulch. A giant amount of mulch. So much so, that when I called around for prices, the mulch people all asked if I were a commercial property. One woman even said she felt sorry for me that there was so much garden to reclaim. The end amount of mulch currently sitting in my driveway is 13 cubic yards. Not cubic feet, but yards.

This is enough mulch to fill a smaller sized dump truck, and creates a pile larger than our pickup. Now the plan is to shovel the mulch into a wheelbarrow, cart it to the other end of the yard, and pitchfork it into place. I figure if I put down about 4" of mulch it should help. It has to, I can't justify using that much weedkiller in one yard.