Year: 2026

Weed tree

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Box elder aka a weed tree

This volunteer tree started growing there maybe four or five years back, and is now almost literally trying to eat a table where I work on gear and put out seedlings, blocking the morning sun, getting in the way. Plus, what’s that dense little micro-environment hosting that might crawl or fly directly onto the veg plants?

It’s known as the box elder, a scrappy, scrawnier member of the maple family that’s described unaffectionately as a weed tree, or even a trash tree. That’s cold, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t know or wouldn’t care about what people call it. It’s too busy growing at an insane rate for a tree, at the same time spreading its multiple stems. In some countries, it’s officially classified as invasive, a menace to society.

Cut it off at the ground, which I’ve done every year since it appeared, and its resilient root system cheerfully sends up more. I don’t have time for a root excavation and eradication project at the moment. You’d think I’d have gotten to it earlier, but this growth snuck up in the last week or two, as the weight of the new leaves bent its weak and spindly stems over the table. Guess I’ll chop it back again for now. Carnage!

Morning carnage

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Weed tree, trash tree, table-eating tree, time to step back! Cutting back the invading box elder from the work table, using probably antique garden shears, the best tool at hand, seems kind of brutal, but this is tiny farming. The whole idea is to guide some space, some land, to your liking. It is kind of militaristic in nature, there’s no getting away from that! Take over, suppress what you don’t want, install what you do, and hunker down to maintain position. I’m kidding, of course, actually thinking about farming and gardening in those start terms is not helpful or enjoyable, IMHO, you layer on your framing and do what you have to do.

The garden shears only work well on the pencil-thick still-green upper stems, but that’ll do for now. Loppers—lopping shears, with long leveraging handles—would be perfect here, the tool for the job, though at the base this tree is probably a little past even them. So then, a pruning saw. I have neither, so a real saw, a sharp knife, and some bending and twisting may be involved for a proper cutback. Or, much as I don’t want to invest in a box elder battle, I’ll get ahold of a pruning saw. I wonder how much the roots can expand, year after year, without any leaves to feed them…

Brave garlic

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A few garlic, left out of the row cover leek moth protection tent, to see if the moths do arrive. I haven’t seen their eggs, or the moths, in person, just the busy boring larva. The eggs are apparently tiny and laid singly on the leaves, so hard to spot. I check daily. Pretty sure these brave guys, ready to take one for the team, are so far leek moth free.

Wind and more wind

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Row cover blown off the garlic

At this point, end of month, I’d have to say WIND has been the weather theme of this May. Practically every day. Gusty enough to sometimes threaten the more delicate seedlings, and to put off ladder work on the big greenhouse. Here, the wind has blown off the garlic’s row cover. Not a problem as far as protection from the nocturnal leek moth horde that may be lurking, but more work to put back. Complicating this little matter, the garlic is growing up and straining at the cover, gradually pulling it out from being fully weighted by the rocks. Since the cover should stay on through June, that will have to be solved. Stay tuned!

Ploughman’s lunch?

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A supermarket sandwich

Here we are growing food, so it stands to reason that what we eat while working in the field matters. Like today’s midday meal, a slightly updated ploughman’s lunch I suppose, minus the beer. It’s an entirely supermarket-sourced concoction. Ham, cheese, and romaine lettuce on a bagel, with regular yellow mustard (French’s style, and French’s in fact). There’s no reflection of what’s growing in the garden. And future prospects of adding in the homegrown only really includes lettuce. Substantial, tangy, full-sun field grown lettuce would be magnificent. Other than that, getting hold of local baking isn’t hard, but costly. As for ham and cheese, prices are stratospheric for true small-farm local meat and dairy. One way or the other, we’ve all gotta eat—things will look up as the field fills out, as it always does!

Next generation

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The second round of lettuce isn’t a next generation in a people having kids way, but it feels like one, as one seeding of lettuce grows to tasty salad size, while another is just getting started to take its place. Achieving an endless harvest is super rewarding (not to mention, necessary, if you’re going to market every week)—succession planting so that quick-to-mature, pick-once crops are steadily available at their peak all through the growing season. Salad greens like lettuce, mustard and arugula, baby bok choi and kale, also spinach, radish, summer turnip, green onions, and more can be planted repeatedly. Work out the timing, as things grow fast early on and slow down into end of summer and fall.

Oddly, in the hundreds or thousands of home veg gardening chats I’ve had, I can’t remember anyone beaming with satisfaction over their succession planting successes. It’s as if home garden seeding only happens in spring. Maybe lots of home tiny farmers do it, and just don’t like talking about it. It makes sense, it’s useful, and it’s fun to mention!

Pot experiment update #1

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Tomato seedlings: plug sheet vs deep pot

The story so far: Five days ago, 10 tomato seedlings, five each of two varieties, were potted up from the plugsheet where they started, to individual deep pots. The pots measure twice as deep as the cells, though they look taller in the photo. Pretty soon, all the toms will be transplanted at the same time, side by side, to see if deeper rooting leads to bigger, better, faster tomato plants. The ones in pots were also buried up to their seed leaves (that first pair that look like wings)—with their power of adventitious rooting, new roots will develop along the buried stem, so there’ll be a LOT more roots. The leafy parts look about the same between the two, while the real action right now is happening underground. In the plugsheet, roots are already circling around the cell walls. In the pots, it’s a root jailbreak, although they’ll find their new walls pretty quick. But walls that won’t be there forever!


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