Hunt the vegetables!

Earlier this year, full of the feeling of spring I set to work on my vegetable patch and set carrot and beetroot seeds and some onion sets, looking forward to being able to enjoy home grown produce during the summer.  A few weeks later, there were tiny green seedlings beginning to appear.  Something I always marvel to see.   As the weeks went on I realised that the tiny green stems and leaves which were appearing weren`t my vegetables but were weeds.    So, a dilemna, do I pull them out and risk loosening any baby vegetable seedlings which may be starting to grow, or do I leave them until I can see what is what.    I decided to leave them.  After a few weeks still no carrots had appeared, but the beetroot had.   So I very carefully, on my hands and knees, picked out all the weeds. 

But, after a few days I looked again and the weeds were back twice as big as before, but the beetroot had got no bigger, and still no carrots, and the onion sets weren`t showing much signs of life either apart from about half a dozen of them.     I again went to work on the weeds and removed them.

After the third or fourth time of doing this, I got so disheartened that my veg weren`t growing that I gave up - so here is my veg (weed) patch!    At least the runner beans which I started off in pots and set out later seem now to be doing and have some flowers on them, so hopefully I`ll at least get a crop of them.

Somewhere in among there, should be a few onions and a few beetroot - anyone want to come and find them?!

The patch is fenced in to keep neighbourhood cats out, because they caused damage last year to my vegetables by scapping and leaving `little messages`, the fencing has kept them out but -  how do I keep weeds out??