Weeds or Wanted?

Why do baby plants and weeds look so identical?!

Lately, the first thing I do in the morning is go outside to check out the garden and see what's changed since I was last out there (ie yesterday). And the great thing is that there's usually something to see - a new sprout here, more leaves there, buds opening everywhere. It isn't all great, though. Maybe it's just my inexperience talking, but... I can't tell the difference between weeds sprouting and the seeds I planted coming up.

Grass? Spring Onions?

I've tried googling it, but most of the advice seems to come down to looking at the arrangement - if it's in rows where you planted a row of seeds, it's probably your seeds! Unfortunately for me this garden has a drip watering system that really only waters along the rows where I planted stuff... and therefore the weeds are appearing in the same areas, since that's where the water is.

Googling for examples of initial sprouts helped a little - but only so far. The seed leaves of carrots look pretty much like grass shoots, and (even more confusingly) one of the plants I've had pop up across several beds looks just like spinach sprouts apparently should... but it isn't growing solely where I planted spinach. 

Spinach?

This little bugger has been the biggest cause of my anxiety so far. It grows in a neat row along the line where I sowed spinach, that much is true. It looks about right, especially as it grows bushier. I even spotted some seed shells stuck to a few leaves, and that felt like pretty good confirmation. But seemingly identical plants have sprouted in a totally separate garden bed, in an area where I would have assumed that they were weeds (they were easy enough to distinguish from the carrots I planted there, even if grass is NOT easy to tell apart!).

I basically have no idea what's going on. Is there a weed that looks the same as young spinach growing amongst my carrots? Did spinach seeds somehow end up in the carrot bed? Am I lovingly cultivating a bed of weeds where I wanted spinach to grow?

A closer look at the stuck seed shells.

So far I've forced myself to wait it out. This did result in leaving some weeds to grow quite tall before I could consider it a safe bet that they needed to come out - poor things must have gotten their hopes up that they would get to stay! At least in a few cases this has worked perfectly, as both the cucumbers and carrots have started to developed their true leaves quite quickly.

Carrots developing true leaves!

Okay, bringing up the cucumbers is kinda cheating because they're much bigger than anything I could legitimately confuse with a weed. I'm just excited to see their progress.

Spiky little cucumber leaves appear!

But really, it's a bit of a dilemma. I can pick out and weed some of the more obvious imposters, but there are now a couple places in the garden where I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to leave. The spinach pictures are almost two weeks old now, and this is what they look like at this point:

Almost certainly spinach.

And this is growing in the other bed:

Not entirely sure how this could be spinach.

Is it just me or are they identical?! If not for the other plants I would have stopped wondering if I was growing weeds or not - they're in a straight line, they match pictures online of young spinach, etc. Short of putting some in my mouth, though, I guess this is as sure as I'm going to get. Maybe the other bed has, somehow, grown itself some spinach too. Maybe I dropped a seed there without realising it when I sowed the others. Maybe it is just a really spinach-looking weed!

Only one way to be sure, right? I'll get back to you after the taste test.