One weed at a time
I have never found anyway around tasks like weeding or dish washing other than to just do it, tackling one area and tackling one weed at a time. Sometimes the rows look awfully long, but it is rewarding to finish and see how good a weed-free row looks. And actually weeding isn’t all that bad, it isn’t really physically taxing like hauling hay, and if your soil has good organic matter the weeds pull very easy. If your soil needs improvement, that is a different story. The weeds want to hang on, breaking off at the soil level and requiring a little more work.
I am shocked at how late our garden is. Easily a month behind still. I hope these root crops will grow to maturity.
My main task here was to weed the carrot rows and thin the crop. I have found that for me what works best is to combine the two jobs, invariably some carrot plants will come out with the weeds reducing my need to thin.
A week later, already needing deer protection and barely out of the ground. I have also succumbed to spot irrigating this year too, to speed up the growing process. The window of time for late maturing vegetables is compressed this year due to the delayed planting dates for our area. Usually I don’t water the garden, but it would be kind of silly of me not to, this year.
The squash are growing well since we have had a week of hot temperatures, but maturity of the fruit? I have my doubts. It will depend on our fall. Sometimes we have a very dry and warm fall, and other times fall rains begin in September and end in April…or June as was the case this past spring.
The potatoes are looking great, but late too. Hilling potatoes is another one of those jobs, that like weeding if you delay it, it becomes a monumental task, but done on a timely basis isn’t really that hard at all. Like the carrot weeding/thinning, when I hill my potatoes I am weeding at the same time. A sharp hoe, and good attitude and I can ensure a good potato yield, barring weather related blight problems.
Potatoes & squash.
My other garden task this year was fallowing half of this garden, which started last year with a fall sown cover crop of annual rye. I am in the process of working that in now with a cover crop disc. I have a terrible habit of letting my headlands go back to grass – and over time I lose valuable garden space - so this year while I am working on the cover crop I am also hitting the headlands and edges that I have let creep back into grass. Basically expanding the garden size back to what I had originally worked up for planting. Sigh.
Has the weather this year changed your garden plans?
Food Renegade
Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op
Not the weather so much as my MIL being the busiest person on the planet. When we got back home (staying here temporarily), she had dozens of starts in tiny pots, dried out and withering in the heat. Poor little things. I took all the weeds out of her garden space–this year I am insisting on an autumn cover crop!!–and did what I could for her plants. If nothing else, there will be plenty of beans and peas since I planted them with extreme prejudice against unused, perfectly good soil
We had wonderful rain early on, but also lots of wind. It was windy all through May and 1/2 of June. Usually we are safe transplanting mid-May, but this year we were way into June before we finally had a break and planted. Its all good now though, thanks to 100 degree weather and we did have some big rains in July. Now the work really starts!:)
The weather here in North Carolina has killed my garden this year! No rain for two months and the tempertures in the high 90′s and low 100′s!
Not to mention the deer and rabbit problems! I am so glad that we joined a CSA early in May or we would be produce-less this year. O’well maybe next year?
Our Spring was really cold and wet too. The tomatos are late, and I don’t even know if I am going to get pumpkins and other squash this year, the fruits are just starting to come on and our first frost dates are usually mid October, if not earlier. However, the Cabbage, Kale and Broccoli did wonderful due to the cold spring and summer…I wish I had had a crystal ball and had planted more of those
The garden is easily a month ahead, here in upstate NY. The only thing I’m waiting (impatiently) for are my tomatoes to ripen. I’m sure I’ll be sorry I wished for that but, after the tomato blight disaster last year, I am completely out of canned tomatoes! I am to restock enough for two years.
Hang in there! I think of you often when tending my slow growing northwest garden….
You are so right…I always feel I can get anything done, all I have to do is start. One thing at a time. It make take some time, but I can get it done.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com/
I will never tire of looking at other peoples gardens. Just love it. As you know, it’s been a trying year. I think it’s been weird all over. My 3rd planting of beets and kale are up, but that darn raccoon finished off all the corn. I did pick my first season of growing dry beans. They look good. Now I’m hoping that I can kill off all the barn rats so they don’t eat my pumpkins. What a year!
The weather this year has done a number on our garden and the nearby farmer’s crops. It was cold and long. We had a hard freeze on June 17th, a whole month after our usual last frost date.
I’ll be surprised if we get corn. We won’t get melons and very little squash. The potatoes got a slow start but did well until the grasshoppers hit. Trying to figure out how to stop that for next year.
Even with that, I was optimistic and I had a pretty good garden going until the neighboring dairy’s cows moved across the garden. I threw up my hands for three weeks after that and the weeds got control. I’m just now claiming control back, but it’s too late, obviously for most of the plants. *sigh*
I didn’t recognize those squash since they weren’t covered in squash bugs.
Spence, I don’t even want to tell you that we don’t have squash bugs around here…
You have a wonderful big garden, but the two of us would have a hard time eating all the produce. My little kitchen garden sometimes gives us too much as it is. I planned to hill my potatoes this year, but never got around to it. Even so, I got a decent crop of nice sized spuds to save for fall and winter use. – Margy
Main change in plans because of weather? I wussed out completely! Delayed for a cold spring, then suddenly heat at 95+ with high humidity through most of June and July was simply more than I was ready for. I wilted.
Question Nina. I’ve been trying to research ragweed. Have learned that the seeds stay viable up to 40 years in the soil and it is a heavy user of zinc. Wasn’t able to learn if there are things it’s telling me (other than that I disturbed the soil) or adding back.
Have a “lovely” crop of ragweed in what should have been my garden. Current plan is to mow it, mow it again, then bury it under a few inches of moldy hay I can get free, and top that with a few buckets of coffee grounds for the nitrogen. Am hoping that the green stuff plus the coffee grounds will break down the seeds in the hay, the hay will smother the ragweed (or at least help me see it if it pokes it’s head through and tries to flower) and all of it will add some tilth for next years’ garden.
If I get this done before the flower heads appear, do you think this is a credible/logical plan, or am I being stupid with the hay and/or ragweed?
If I have to, I can buy straw – but the moldy hay is free.
Hayden, I don’t have any experience with ragweed since it isn’t a problem here. But from what I do know about it, it seems to be more of a problem in sod/grasslands instead of a weed of cultivation? Or possibly a saddle plant that appears when the soil is disturbed? I have weeds of one type in my pasture, and weeds of another type in my gardens. Both require a different mindset for control. I try to practice clean cultivation, to keep garden weeds at bay, and mowing, (mechanical or cattle) or trampling with cows for pasture weeds. I know my garden without mulch is upsetting to some who don’t like the look of bare soil, and prefer to mulch. But a vegetable garden is an unnatural man-made idea. If you mulch and mow you are going to push your garden area to a thicker sod type of ground – which is great for grass and bad for tender, wussy vegetables that need loose friable soil. What happens is that a tiller or rotovator (I can’t remember what your BIL used) tends to give you a false sense of a good garden spot because it will tear up the ground enough to make it appear clean enough to plant in. But the quickest recipe for a disastrous garden spot is: Take one sunny grassy area, till into submission, add vegetable seeds, a dash of rain, a week or two away, and sprinkle with tears when you see what comes up
You have two choices, you can build raised beds and cover up the mess beneath, or you can properly prepare a spot for a garden which requires time, bare fallow to kill the grass plants, and to mine the seed bank a little After that bare fallow period you plant a cover crop and plan on planting next year. Basically you have to treat your garden spot like a farm crop spot and most people have an aversion to this – and frankly, it is a skill set that most don’t possess. It takes time and most of us are trained to act in the moment. I have been working on my new garden spot for 15 years and it still isn’t where I would like to see it. So don’t despair. Raised beds as a stop gap might be the quickest way for you to get going on your garden until you get more adjusted in your new place, and in the end it may be all that you need, but at least it will get you gardening fast.
Thanks, Nita – much appreciated. It definitely pops up where the soil is disturbed. Had I realized what was going on, I’d have started pulling it early. But the plant is so pretty, and so easy to pull – and I was so clueless as to what it was – I was going to wait for it to bloom to ‘see what it was’ and by the time someone tipped me off – I was inundated. I’m told it’s a bad year here for ragweed. As the rye dried… and my BIL decided not to harvest it (but didn’t tell me) the standing rye concealed an incoming crop of ragweed in that entire 2 acre field, too. The good news is – LOTS of organic matter, LOL!
I’m cutting it in the field now, and will probably have to make 2-3 more passes to keep it from going to seed.
I’ll think about what to do with the garden for next year. As you said…. it was lawn, tilled 2X. I give my BIL credit for being dubious about the plan, but it’s the best spot and I figured I might as well get things started. The ragweed out-competed most of the other weeds. This fall I’ll cover it in a thick layer of straw: maybe leave half of it mulched or cover-cropped, and start gardening in the other half. It’s too big for me to work all at once anyway …maybe I need to take the “lasagne” gardening approach.
Hayden, you just liberated those seeds by tilling, and what the heck, it is free organic matter as long as you keep it cut and it doesn’t set seed, a couple of passes with the tractor is easier than weeding for sure. When I see a flush of weeds on new ground, I am always in amazement that there is any soil, the weed seeds are masters for sure.
We should have gotten several more cuttings of our tree crops on the lot next door but have not been mowing over there due to schedule. And so the weather, rain almost every day, has meant…snakes, snakes, snakes. Umm, so not as much tromping through high grass to the “jungle” to gather our greens. We’re trying to do a barter for a more powerful mower so we can get in there more regularly (and safely). I hope your plants mature right on schedule…looks good even with a late start.