Last autumn, after a full year of knee problems due to a fall, we had nine veg-beds chockfull of weeds.

Now before I come across sounding feeble, I didn’t fall due to lack of balance. Oh no. My black lab, Juno, managed to wrap her leash around my legs while I was trying to get the cat, Fat Boy, into his carrier. We were going to the vet. Juno went one way, the cat the other, and I crashed onto my left knee.

That was in July and for the next month, I was on crutches. No gardening possible.

By October, the raised beds were nothing but weeds. Wild brassicas, bind weed, horse nettle, spurge, some species of nastiness spread by rhizomes–ugh.

To alleviate the problem, we tilled the beds, cleared the detritus, and covered everything with black plastic bags to starve unwanted seeds.

Now it’s spring, the knee is healed, and we’re ready to garden. But since I don’t want to spend the summer on my still-somewhat-tender knees weeding, I decided to try the environmentally-friendly plastic mulch from Gardener’s Supply.

Before the weather turned nice enough to start, the Kansas State University Research and Extension horticultural newsletter let me know to set soaker hose under the plastic mulch to ease watering.

So that’s what we did. Marking the beds first and fastening our above-ground soaker hoses with earth staples, we organized a single raised bed.

And, those perforated circles were a snap to punch out using only fingers. No sharps required.

We’ve planted bunching onions (I call them scallions) in this bed. We’ll see how it goes.

I have red plastic mulch for tomatoes, but more on that in two-three weeks.

Happy gardening.