What better to do on a pleasantly cool and misty day in the market garden than some leisurely rock picking? It’s a relaxing if neverending task, often put off during the busier days of spring and summer, performed here by Heike. In the field, fist-size rocks push up every winter, get raked from the beds to the paths in spring, then get in the way of weeding all summer long. They’re a growing season harvest all their own, and picking is ongoing. The biggest, 10lb (4.5kg) and up, and quite rare, are set aside for anchoring row cover. The rest are collected in buckets, and taken by tiny tractor to a spot along a fence where I’m gathering quite a pile. Been thinking of building a low rock wall, but haven’t decided on a perfect spot—get it wrong, and it’d be kinda hard to move.
rocks
After the rain…
After a rain, it’s easy to see exactly how much work is ahead in the organic field! The dark wet soil and the flat light of a cloudy day make every detail stand out: weeds exploding, dense rows that’ll need thinning (thanks to the generous Earthway seeder), rocks to get in the way of hoes and tiller both. But it’s usually better than it looks. Here, the Horse tiller can be walked up each path in about a minute. Thinning the beets (first two beds on the right) is actually a harvest of excellent beet greens. The rocks, well, the bigger ones just have to be picked. The worst is in-row weeding, for stuff right in with the crops. This has to be done mostly by hand, but if you get the worst spots, the veggies soon grow to where they can more or less fend for themselves, shading out new weed growth. Or the crop is soon finished (like spinach, on the left) and the whole bed can be tilled up. With a little thoughtfully directed labor, it all works out! (We got 15mm (3/5″) of rain… Not bad.)