Save Me!

I don't know how many of you read gardening books but I do.  I own and have read a ton of them.  One piece of advice given when you want to start a new raised bed: "Lay cardboard or thick plastic on the ground."  Its supposed to smother the weeds and keep your new bed weed free!

I don't think it works because I have raspberries, birch, aspen and fireweed that has pushed their way through all barriers and are threatening to take over my raised bed.  I don't know how it happened! I have been invaded and I am loosing the battle in that area.  I may not have put enough plastic down when I built the raised bed.

Yeah, one raised bed!  I used to have three but I took two down when I gave up the battle to the plants that took it over.  I am about ready to give up on the third one.

I swear, the raspberry plants were the first to inch their way up to the surface of the bed.  They pushed and strained their way up through three feet of dirt.  I'd pull the plants out, time after time but they would not give up.  Then I'd find either birch or aspen seedlings showing themselves between the stubborn raspberries.  So now I'm pulling birch and aspen seedlings with the raspberries. 

Then throw in a sprinkling of fireweeds in the mess.  I have fought these plants in my last bed for the past six or seven years.  A couple of those birch got hold of the bed and I am not going to get those suckers out of there easily!  I think I'm going to have to take the bed apart and reassemble else where with a thick thick layer of both plastic and cardboard.  Then I'm going to line the bed with plastic and staple it to the sides because I think some of plants snuck in up the side and spread that way!

I realize life is a great teacher but darn it, life could have given me a break on my garden!  Couldn't it?