Using straw for garden mulch: a cautionary tale...

I am a gardening genius!

At least I was until I did this a couple of weeks ago....

Oh yes, I know... the straw mulch looks very pretty!

Oooooo.... Ahhhhh...

And then this happened....Am I growing oat grass or tomatoes?

If you squint really hard, you might see the tomato plants that are supposedly there...

There are only about 10,000 of these little bastards... I might finish pulling by next month.



Yeah, I know my beans are small.  Shut.  up.  I've been busy!

Straw does, in fact, make GREAT mulch.  Just let it overwinter first.  It needs to get nice and brown and moldy.  I read the cautionary tales about using it fresh, that the seedlings would sprout in a nanosecond, and that you would be pulling weeds for the rest of the season.  It is not that I didn't believe it... I just chose to ignore the warnings because I needed a cheap mulch and I needed it NOW.

If you need me, you know where I'll be....

(Drinking large umbrella drinks in the shade, watching the kids pull weeds.  Pays 25 cents an hour.  Interested??)