Dreading Spring?

It may not look it outside, but I know from the seed catalogs piling up in the back entry to the house that Spring is around the corner.

I’ll tell you a secret…I’m not looking forward to doing a garden this year.  Don’t tell anyone.

Those who have had to endure seeing my garden the last few years, and the weeds that inevitably take over know what I’m talking about.  Don’t even get me started on the sighs I get from my husband…the professional gardener of thousands of acres. I’ve tried to explain to him that we all have our giftings, and he gets to use all sorts of equipment that I can’t.

Don’t get me wrong…I love having the fresh produce that tastes about 1000x better than anything I can buy.  One pepper from our garden smells like the entire pile of them at the grocery store.  Tomatoes actually have flavor.  And if you haven’t tried eating sugar snap peas raw in the garden on a sunny day, you are missing out on one of life’s best simple pleasures.

I was telling my mom my secret dread of the upcoming gardening season, and she told me that planting seeds aren’t so hard.  I told her I didn’t mind that part.  Planting can be fun most of the time.  She said she understood that harvesting the crop can be so time consuming, as well as preserving the abundance of it.  I admitted, I love harvesting them, and shelling peas and snapping beans has a relaxing rhythm to it.  I’ve even got the 2 older kids to help me with that part very eagerly last year, so it didn’t get too overwhelming.  Also, I love having my pantry and freezers full of this amazing gold from the ground.

“So it boils down to you hating to weed.” She said.

Yup.  Pretty much.

So I suppose saying that I’m not looking forward to gardening isn’t the whole truth.  I’m not looking forward to weeding.  That would be more accurate.  My failures in the past have just provided me with even more little weed babies waiting to pop up each year.  Ugh.  So I’ve been going over and over in my head how to make it this year.

Last year was my first year in not burning out in the harvest.  That was due almost entirely to the kids’ help.  Getting them to weed, though, was almost as difficult as getting myself to weed.

So instead of flipping through seed catalogs this year, my garden planning for the year lies mostly in developing ways to make weeding fun for the kids and me.  Every year I say we’ll go out every morning.  Then comes a few days of rain, or a large day of harvest, or a few days at the lake.  We always, somehow get backed up.  It’s when we get backed up that we can’t keep up.  The usual hour in the morning turns into 2 and the kids can’t go that long, and the babies can’t be entertained without my help that long.  Last year I was so focused on getting the garden weeded one morning, that Elias wondered off and ate mushrooms from the yard.  Yeah, that was a fun poison control calling kind of day.  They need attention from me, and I can’t go for an hour or two straight of weeding. 

My mom pointed out how quick weeding went with my halo hoe.  She suggested that we buy a halo hoe for each of the kids, and cut it down to their size.  I like that idea.  That one might be implemented this year.  I’m thinking of assigning each of them a row.  Silje will get more work than David because she’s older and better at it.  I’m also thinking of getting batteries for my boom box, and buying a cd containing salsa music.  I normally like the piece and quiet, but maybe the kids think it’s boring.

I’ve tried dried grass, I’ve tried plastic, I’ve tried cardboard.  I haven’t tried carpet, because I don’t have carpet, but I imagine it would have the same affect as the cardboard.  Weeds creep between cracks and close to the plants and we already have a grub problem in the yard so covering the ground doesn’t help.  They need to be hand picked or hoed and there’s just no way around it.

So help me.  Please.

Help me think of ways to motivate my children and myself as this Spring approaches.  (If you think I was asking for help with the actual weeding…well, you won’t be turned away.)  What did you do with your children, or what did you do as a child?