Another Case of "It seemed like a good idea at the time"

I was talking to a friend earlier today about vegetable gardens and how I manage mine.  She mentioned raised beds - the discussion about why and why not they might be a good idea went off at a tangent, and I realised after we parted that I had forgotten to impart one lesson that I wish someone had offered me before I made my big mistake.

Something that seemed a good idea at the time, and something that others had recommended as a simple and permanent solution to one of my gardening problems  - one that could eliminate the intrusions into my sacrosanct vegetable beds by those bitter enemies, couch and kikuyu grass - turned into a mammoth task of demolition and reconstruction.

 Initial construction, done in winter time, with the first of the weed mat and sleepers.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time" - how often have those words come back to haunt the speaker?  It can take years, it can take moments, but sooner or later, it will happen (though, thankfully, not in the terrifying manner in which it happened to a couple of recreational angling film producers, decades ago, who thought it might be a good idea to bolt the core of an old spin dryer tub to the back of their boat, fill it with chopped up berley, and head out for a day of deep water shark fishing - their subsequent, terror filled moments, as a great white shark longer than their aluminium runabout shook their boat from side to side while tearing off the berley bucket and a large chunk of the transom, made them much more careful about future good ideas)

In my case, a gentler and more persistent enemy meant that, after only a few years, I had to pull up 80 or so metres of sleeper-constructed edging I had used to build my raised beds, dig over the entire garden, and then rebuild it.

 On a winters morning, almost the last of the sleepers being replaced

The problem?  I believed the advice and advertisements that touted that supposedly wonderful product known as weed-mat; that ultra-fine, woven plastic cloth that is claimed to allow only moisture through, while keeping weeds and their roots out of the bed. My hope had been that I could then mow or trim right to the woodwork while the bed remained weed free.

Little did I know that it would become a sanctuary for the roots and growth nodes of some of the most aggressive runner grasses on the planet, sheltering from what should have been lethal assaults by my various gardening tools.  Even potato and strawberry runners found their way in, and if that doesn't seem like a problem, well, in the Blue Mountains, both those species are willing and capable when it comes to taking over a garden bed - miss a skerrick of either when digging a bed over  and they will be back.

 Still a bit wobbly, but beginning to take shape - without the constant re-invasion of paths and beds by the runners hiding in the weedmat - in future, the strategy is plenty of woodchips along the path, and a forked weeder to extract any insurgents

And so I was once again reminded of something that my mother often said to me - "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is" - and anytime something seems like a miraculously good idea, always have another look at it, from as many angles as possible.  After you have perused all sides, ask your friends and neighbours, too (and you grandpa, if he's still around - chances are he really has seen it all before, and, like many older people, has just been too polite to say anything until asked)