Breaking New Ground

[canesisters]

First year garden is always the hardest. I say go for it.

HEY!!! Why didn't anyone tell me this last year??????

Here I was thinking that I was possibly the world's worst weeder....

 

[digitS']

My wife and I had a little bet that I could kill quackgrass roots by leaving them in a black plastic bag through the summer -- all summer!. I put the bag where it was in shade through the afternoons otherwise, I think ... I might have won .

@majorcatfish can probably cause quite a bit of neighborhood consternation with that torch. I had never seen the lady next door to one garden until I showed up late one summer afternoon with a propane torch. She was back and forth, back and forth on her backyard deck like a creature possessed!

I was well back in my garden, torching weeds along paths. Mostly, the perennial ones came back. The neighbor began to show up mowing with her lawn tractor in what had once been a half acre horse corral, after that. I wasn't back to torment her with the torch, however.

The neighbor on the other side of them built a 2nd residence on their property. Nervous neighbor's husband was out complaining about it. He was in construction. They sold out and moved before I left. Now, the ground that was home to my garden just grows weeds and small trees.

Steve

 

[so lucky]

Well, I took advantage of the warmer dry day yesterday and managed to get the new garden area covered up. I gathered two carts full of oak leaves, and cleaned out the chicken house. All that beautiful mess was watered down, to keep it from blowing away, then spread around. (A no-wind day was forecasted, but it was blowing about 10 MPH) Then I spread the black plastic on top and used t-posts at the corners, and logs elsewhere to hold the plastic down. It seems to be a good tough plastic. The area I need to cover was 10x20, and the plastic was 10x25, so had no issues there. I just cut off the excess at one end.
What I am hoping is that I can use my spading fork in the spring to cultivate/turn over/de-grass the garden rows, and leave the paths alone. The paths will be covered with newspaper and straw as the season progresses. This is what I hope will happen. If all else fails, it can go back to lawn.
So.....what kind of crops are least finicky, most likely to grow in a new garden? Beans? Mustard? I know not to try carrots or other root crops till the clay soil is better prepared.

 

[canesisters]

In my 'first year' lawn- garden, the cucumbers and squash went WILD! But that was part of the weeding problem. It was vining all over and grass was trying REAL HARD to come back.

Sound like you made a GREAT start. And the idea of turning only the paths is good. Just be diligent on your weeding. I like to think of it as harvesting mixed greens for the chickens.

 

[digitS']

A spading fork is great for getting weeds out! Once again ~ the quackgrass ~ with care, you can get most (all) of the roots intact. That grass will send it's rhizomes under mulch to come up elsewhere, if that's what you have in the paths. (It isn't my most difficult weed, just the most difficult one of the grass family.)

You may not have problems with turnips as a root crop. The only 2 times that I grew turnips was in newly tilled gardens. The story on turnips is that it is a good crop on new ground. That was certainly my experience! I fed the roots to the critters. I don't know if I ever ate the greens. I may have saved that experience for my adventure with bok choy, a turnip cousin.

I grew lots of beans in both those gardens and also had Debbie's experience with squash. There are bush varieties of acorn squash. I know that I was growing that in those gardens in the first few years, if not the first. Acorn was my winter squash of choice during that time.

Steve

 

[majorcatfish]

quackgrass is the state weed here...
and yes @digitS' when you have the burners wide open it produces a very impressive flame and roar

 

[seedcorn]

I will get beat up for this, BUT I'd spray with glysophate to kill the grass, pile the compost on top.....garden at will.

 

[digitS']

Will

lives

next door.

Steve

 

[so lucky]

I won't beat you up, seedcorn. (Hopefully no one else will either. I don't like fights) We both know we have different opinions on that. I just really want to avoid glysophate in the garden if at all possible. Squash is just not a favorite in this house. Not even zucchini, unless breaded and smothered in fake cheese sauce.
But we like turnip greens, so that would be something to try in the new area.

 

[seedcorn]

@so lucky probably should but don't keep track who is organic vs. Non-GMO, vs all chemicals are good crowds.

I know from experience how impossible it is to stop grass from taking over a garden when starting from scratch. I'd rather have clean garden with use of chemicals I consider safer than detergent. Even killing the grasses, all gardens will still have weeds-which are a plant in wrong place.

Some consider dandelions a good thing. To me, noxious weed.