I had put my veggie beds to rest for the winter. What could go wrong?
I knew we were going to be out of town for the first three months of 2020, so I did not plant our normal winter crops. After the last summer/fall crops in three of the beds, I weeded them trying to disturb the soil as little as possible and then covered them with a four-inch layer of pine needles. (6 reasons to use pine needle mulch in edible gardens) In two of the other three beds had the native salvia and other wildflowers growing, so I did some light weeding and left them alone. In the last bed I planted some wildflower seeds and I'll cover this bed in my next post.
So in those three beds, a visitor from South America came calling...
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| This innocent-looking plant is a monster! | The native range for this oxalis is shown in green while the purple areas show where it's escaped. |