Re-mulching the onions and garlic
Last fall when I planted
our potato
onion and garlic bulbs, I left gaps in the
straw mulch so that the new shoots would be able to push up
through. If I'd been smart, I would have come along a month later
once the leaves showed and added straw snug up against my onion and
garlic plants. I didn't. Instead, once the snow melted, I
was chagrined to see big weed islands surrounding each plant.
At first, I figured I'd
have to hand weed each bed, but I put that off for about a month since
the ground has been way too cold to make weeding pleasant.
Eventually, it occurred to me 
that I might be able to get
away with just adding another layer of straw over the problem plants
and let lack of sun do my weeding job for me. Some of these weeds
are very sneaky, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the chickweed
slips up through the straw and continues to grow, but I figure it's
worth a shot at preventing all of that cold weather weeding.
A side benefit of
mulching my Alliums
was moving our over-wintered straw off the secondary daffodil
patch. We have more daffodils than we can shake a stick at, and I
certainly wouldn't have spent energy moving the bales just to save a
few dozen of our thousands of bulbs. But with the first flowers
already opening up, I know we'll enjoy seeing a sea of yellow flowers
next week.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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