Ah, spring. Gotta love the garden coming alive after Winter. I mean, it’s not literally coming back from the dead or anything, but dormancy can look pretty darned similar to it. It’s a massive relief when the green shoots start poking through the ground.
Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There are just enough unwelcome surprises in the mixed bag of springtime to keep things balanced. For example, the other day I went to check on the bed I’ve been prepping all winter for spring veggies, only to find a mass of grass seedlings living it up in my carefully prepared patch. It’s not that I don’t love grasses to buy; they’re just so… irrepressible.
They must have popped out the rabbit poo that I chucked in on top of the cardboard. The people at the rabbit shelter could have told me the bunnies had been eating seedy grass, but then I guess beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve had this same thing happen once before when I was new to composting, before I got the bokashi bin. As a result of that bin, I’m still new at building a freestyle compost pile, but at least I don’t have unwanted lawns sprouting in my beds, until now.
It is what it is, as they say. That’s the primary law of gardening, if you ask me. Plants are living entities, and you simply can’t predict every little nuance of their behaviour. I mean, you can get a pretty good idea of what’s likely to happen, but there’s always that wildcard element that pops up and destroys your broad bean crop (looking at you, mystery slug with purple dots on its underside).
I wonder if I should relocate my baby bay tree into the bed, and re-purpose it as a perennial culinary herb patch. If I moved the thyme there as well, and got another rosemary… yes, I can see this working. That should keep the grass at bay. Where am I going to put my silverbeets, though?