After a marathon session of pigweed pulling, the pumpkin patch appeared, looking rather orderly and much expanded from one month ago. So, all’s well with the PUMPKINS, on to the hopefully last major de-pigweeding of winter squash. I noticed back-to-school ads in a local paper already, and as obnoxiously early as that is, we are also preparing for that final summer stretch in the field. Oh well, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are doing great, garlic is soon to be pulled, the best eating and market days are still to come!
how intensively do you weed? i figure a little pigweed won’t hurt (maybe even help esp since my soil heavy clay). in fact i have some areas in weed cover crops.
I was reading an article on no-till agriculture yesterday…was wondering if you put a winter cover crop in at the end of the season for mulching. I’ve tried imagining doing no-till in my nano-garden but then I don’t have anyway of tilling in the compost that we make endless amounts of. Maybe no-till is a technique best left to large scale crops like wheat and canola.
There is nothing better than a field of pumpkins! It does seem a little early for the back-to-school/harvest countdown, but then again, this summer has flown by…
chris: Weeding around here is always, it seems, “intensive weeding”… Your speculation that “a little pigweed won’t hurt” I would find kinda funny, if it weren’t so alarming. :) You simply don’t want to let pigweed get established, which means, going to seed and that seed distributed in your soil through at some point tilling in. Really, some things you don’t want to learn the hard way if you can avoid it. I know what you mean about “weeds” sometimes seeming…benign. Often, I weed and find the soil nice and moist, being shaded and all, but the thing is, weeds always get away from you if you look away for a minute at the wrong time…
Steve: This year, I’m going to try more a more organized approach to cover cropping, particularly ’cause I’m not going to use any more on-farm manure due to…pigweed seed. The plan so far is oats in August and probably winter rye in September, as sections are harvested and cleared for the season. I’m still working it out. Legumes (clover, etc) will be worked in there, but I’m for now going on the “build organic matter to bind nutrients” rather than trying to add things… So, it’s not no-till or any sort of permaculture. We’ll see how the plan develops!