What Did You Do In The Garden?

[digitS']

Every soil type is different but my favorite tools for freeing garden soil of weeds is first a spading fork and, following that, with a long-handled cultivator. (A stool and gloved hands are for freeing the planting beds of weeds.)

My lawn is mowed once a week but the bluegrass sets seed. That is obvious because I must track the seed into the garden paths on my shoes. The carpeting of the path diminishes with distance into the garden.

I don't want it there. Unattended, the grass will creep into the planting beds. Yesterday, I was out with the fork and cultivator breaking the shallow-rooted bluegrass loose from the packed down paths. This isn't quack grass. If it was, I'd even have better reason to use those tools to avoid leaving roots in the ground. There was a bindweed plant doing its best to get a start. I think I got it all out.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

scraped about half the gardens inside the fence that were the worst of them that needed it (2 & 1/2 hrs, nice breeze, cool enough to get it done). was able to do the fine control weeding in one of the gardens, but will have to go through the rest (which will take a few more hours tomorrow). i only remove the few weeds that have seeds which bother me the most (a certain kind of grass and the oxalis), the rest of the weeds are left on the surface to dry out and become worm food. purselane has to be watched a few times and moved if it tries to get rerooted again. with a few dry sunny days coming i'm not too worried about this batch, but i will keep an eye on these gardens and scrape them again. once the bean plants are big enough they shade the areas in the rows well enough it won't take as much time to weed as the season gets longer and then i just have to scrape the rows and check here or there for weeds. when i pick beans i'll often be weeding as i do that too.

for the finer control weeding between and around plants, depending upon how my hands feel, i use either a small sharp edged mason trowel which can scrape and cut the weeds off at the soil surface where i don't need to disturb the roots of the plants or i have a large wooden handled fairly dull knife that i can use to excavate a root out if i really want to go to those extremes (i usually don't). again, any weed that doesn't have seeds or that i don't consider a severe pest i leave to dry out and become worm food. Mom hates that i do this, but to me it is silly to do organic or natural gardening and not give the worms something to eat...

 

[seedcorn]

Tonight I weeded rest of corn and planted last 3 rows of sweet corn. Where I planted the carrots and parsnips, is nothing but weeds. Will tear up and plant with what? Maybe black eyed peas?

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Planted pole bean seeds in spots that did not come up and put some on a fence. Weeded a little, brought some kale in for supper.

 

[digitS']

Hilled the potatoes ...

It seemed a little early but it's a way to knock back the weeds. Those were doing fine. Most everything needs weeding but piling soil on top of them is a down & dirty trick. I may do more of this with things like the cabbage and broccoli.

Oh yeah, the broccoli. They look fine in the little veggie garden but out in the big one - too much weather exposure and, I bet, I'll be tossing several centers so that the plants can grow through the summer and produce lateral buds, later. One plant with evidence of developing way too quickly, isn't much bigger than a coffee cup.

No peas just yet. There are lots of pods and the vines look good but the pods are tiny.

Steve

 

[digitS']

Hilled the squash, pumpkins and some cucumbers. This time, the weeds were removed first. I don't always pull soil around the vines but did this morning.

I couldn't really do more than pull weeds around the the melons; they have been struggling in the inclement weather.


@ninnymary should not be all upset by the feeble performance of her Gris de Rennes. Honestly, all my melons are looking like this! I'm optimistic. We didn't have quite such yo-yo temperatures as in 2019.

Steve
broccoli for lunch!

 

[ninnymary]

Steve, it might be small but it looks mighty! haha and healthy.

Mary

 

[henless]

Picked green beans, cucumbers and finally tomatoes! They weren't fully ripe, but brought them in to ripen in the house. Also weeded my 2 tomato beds.

 

[flowerbug]

that's about the size of mine. @digitS' & @ninnymary. i was worried that one of the plants i have growing was going to die because the stem was flopping all around and i thought it was rotting. it is still alive and growing. and yes i'm surprised. i have another melon plant a few feet away that is so far also still alive, but it didn't have the floppy thing going on.

squash and cucumbers are all doing ok so far too. cucumbers are actually really taking off. there's a ton of flowers on them. i'll have to start checking for cucumbers.

 

[seedcorn]

Weeded, weeded, weeded. So tired of grasses..... all you have to do is leave a piece of root and here they come....

My hybrid Albion parsnip seed turned out to be a bomb. Company advertised themselves as “American” but seed from SE Asia. Out of 1500 planted I’ve now got about 3 plants. Terrible vigor on seed. Letting some plants from last year (hollow) go to seed for next year.