We had good luck with our vegetable garden last year but when the growing season ended we just let it go, figuring to start fresh this spring. I should've paid more attention to it during the winter. Now, as you can see in th photo above, I paid for that neglect.

Normally, folks around here have already started planting things such as onions and potatoes. But we had so much rain during February that things never dried out enough. In fact, the entire winter was warmer and wetter than usual. Now that we're having some better weather, everybody is playing catch-up with their planting.

In our case, the weeds and grass never went dormant, re-seeded naturally, and thrived on the mild winter weather. By mid-January our little plot was covered in green. That's when I woke up and realized it was out of control. So I had to apply some herbicide. After waiting a month and a half, it turned brown and I had to dig it all out. Then, because I had hoed up so much dirt with the grass roots, I had rake it all up and sift it to recover the dirt. (see below)

Finally, we got a neighbor with a small tractor to rototill the plot. (See below) We do have our own garden-class tiller but his reached a lot deeper than ours.