What It Looked Like at the Begginning

In the very beginning, the garden looked a weedy mess. To find the early garden, one needed to look deep under the guinea grass. Especially the upper part of the garden area was thick with grass. It was a gardener’s nightmare, to say the least. Wayne brought his weedwacker and set to work finding the rows. At least then, we could find the veggies to harvest. 

The early garden was a task of harvesting and chopping weeds. Lots of hard labor. After making very slow headway, the decision was made to bring in a backhoe and tear out all the major guinea grass. It meant destroying the leftover crops, but it needed to be done in order to plant more crops. Thus after our initial glut of vegetables, we had a lull in the harvesting while the new crops grew. 

The garden thick with grasses. 

The upper garden area cleared of grass. 

The lower garden area was hand cleared of weeds. Initially we got ahead of the weeds and were quite smug about our gardening savvy. But once it started raining in December, we had to swallow our pride as the weeds once again took over. More about that later.