Out, out damn weed! (And other adventures)

Our mission this weekend was to rid our garden of weeds.

Or, as many weeds as humanly (and non-chemically) possible.

Which means a lot of hand weeding. And a lot of mulch. Luckily, we heard about some free mulch that would be available to anyone with enough gumption to shovel the stuff and not enough sense to know better.

This particular mulch was made from the debris left by the spring tornadoes. It was good to know that a tragedy (or, actually, several tragedies) can become something positive for everyone.



We brought a box of garbage bags and loaded them with mulch. This mulch was great and seemed to consist mostly of downed trees. While we were shoveling (or, I should say, while Adam was shoveling and I was holding the bag) we would see a piece of siding every once in a while that would remind us that some of this mulch wasn't just from trees. Some of it was from people's houses.


And did I mention it was hot? Not just the air and the sun but the mulch itself. You could feel the heat radiating off of it as we (again, Adam) shoveled it into the bags.

We took the mulch back to the garden and got a lot of use out of it! We were even able to mulch our seating area, which seemed rather important since we plan to spend an evening or two out there with wine bottle(s) in tow.




If you think the transformation in our seating area is dramatic, you should see the rest of the garden! I only hope we did it in time for our bush beans, which are looking pretty haggard.

After we weeded and mulched, we fertilized everything since it had been at least 3 weeks since the last time we added fertilizer. We did this with the same water-diluted fish emulsion fertilizer as before.

I'll do a farm-photo-catch-up post tomorrow!

Picture of the Day

Weeding Interrupted.

We went out to the farm with every intention of finishing the weeding. But Mother Nature had other ideas. This storm didn't just have rain. It had lightning, thunder and high winds too. Some of our plot-neighbors' bean poles were knocked over but our plot stayed intact.

First Planting!

While Adam worked on re-tilling our rows, I set about preparing the "round mounds" that would be the home for our squashes, melons and cucumbers. The soil may look hard and cake-y on the top but it is so soft that working it with a shovel and hoe is no problem.

First of all, I broke up the ground surrounding our previously formed mounds. I took this dirt and added it to the mounds. (We have 4 mounds in each section x 4 sections = 16 mounds.)


After forming the mounds, I then sifted through the dirt by hand and pulled out the grass weeds. This sounds a little crazy, but it was actually a lot of fun! I always loved to play in dirt when I was a kid and not much has changed since those days. Plus, I got a good look at all the little bugs and critters living in our dirt.

At the end of the day, I had a bucket o' weeds.





Before I continue, I should say that I'm not a crazy weeder. It isn't something that I necessarily enjoy and it isn't something I think is always important. Overall, I don't think weeds are "bad" and Adam shares this sentiment so I can't see us spending a lot of time weeding. However, our little zucchini and melon plants were raised from seedlings and weren't doing too well....so I wanted to give them the best chance possible.

All that being said, this garden is, in many ways, an experiment for us. We certainly don't know everything there is to know and we hope to learn a lot along the way. By mid-summer we could be reformed anti-weeders with an arsenal of Round-Up at our disposal.

But I doubt it.

After preparing our "mounds" with a compost/peat mixture, I gingerly put our little plants in the mounds. As I said before, these had been raised from seedlings but had started to get weak and spindly in recent days, despite being put out in the sun for a good part of the day. I planted them pretty deep so that their weak bits were under the dirt. A storm was coming in a day and I didn't want them to be torn to shreds.

We made little zucchini "volcanoes" in the middle of the mounds and watered them with a mixture of liquid fertilizer (organic) and water.

Then we wished them luck and headed home.



Next up: Potatoes and Onions!