A rant about weeds.

We had a few days of almost continual rainfall week before last. This was very good, considering that the area was and is in drought conditions. Also, my plants loved it. The transplanted basil and sage loved it, the tomatoes looked good, the lettuces and radishes shot up (I even had one radish grow all the way up. It was picked. Take that, over achiever.) and my onions sprouted. I like.

But you know what else loved the rain? Weeds. Right before that rain would have been a great time to get my whole garden mulched, to try to prevent hostile takeover by sprouts, but, you know, hindsight is 20/20. So I did not get my whole garden mulched; there are still just a couple of areas with the ground covered.

On the other hand, the primary idea of mulch is to shade out the weeds, right? Well, the area under my tomato plants is complete shade, because they're all crowded and overgrown, but quite a few weeds still thrive in there. Despite my careful reach-in method of keeping those guys in check, I discovered something disquieting among my tomato plants. One of the weeds that just looked like a whippy little plant, struggling for life, was in fact whippy looking because it's a VINE. A vine which wrapped itself around a limb of one of my tomato plants and pulled it TO THE GROUND.

That made me mad. Like, mama-bear mad. And it reinforced my resolve to begin mulching. But on the other hand, I know the secret of weeds: I could mulch with bomb grade uranium, and all of my plants, my neighbors and also myself would die... but a few weeds would straggle out of the radioactive mess and they'd be pissed.