I hate weeding

Many a child has had his/her perspective on gardening forever warped by hours of forced labor pulling weeds in mom's or grandma's gardens.  I was no different, and as a kid, I hated the garden.

It wasn't until I became an adult, and realized the virtue and savings of a garden, that I came to love gardening, but I was determined to find a way that is better than how my parents and grandparents did it.

You'll see plenty of posts in my blog talking about the importance of mulch, but I can't reiterate it enough.  Use mulch!

We use two main mulching methods: black plastic and hay/straw.  It's important to understand the strengths and wit weaknesses if each.

Hay/straw helps protect the soil from the harsh sun and pounding effects of the rain.  It also keeps the soil cooler, so it does not work well for crops that like lots of heat, like melons, tomatoes, and strawberries.  You can use it for those crops, but it tends to slow the production more than having the ground left bare.  It inhibits the weeds, but doesn't always stop them entirely, so you have to go back and pull the weeds that make it through.

Black Plastic is almost a complete barrier to weeds, but they will make it up through any holes in the plastic.  We poke our plastic full of holes with a hay fork to allow rain to soak through.  Plastic heats the soil, so can help certain crops warm up quicker in the spring, such as strawberries, and is great for plants that like lots of heat, like melons and tomatoes.  We generally use plastic in such a sway that we leave it on the same bed for multiple years at a time, and simply rotate the crops within the plastic.

One thing I started this year was covering new beds for next year with hay.  We had attempted to work some new sod up this year for potatoes, but the weather absolutely did not cooperate and it did not try out enough to work.  So, I used the extra hay we had from the first cutting and put a think layer of hay over the areas that I'll work up next year.  The hope is that it will help kill the sod, begin to break things down, and provide an environment for the worms to stay near the surface and do their magic.

Here are some updated pictures of the gardens.

Butternut Squash

Cucumbers and cantaloupe

Pumpkins

Watermelons

Potatoes filling out and flowering
 



Next year's beds mulched

Second year raspberries--slowly filling out

Bed with lettuce, zucchini, green beans, carrots, and fall broccoli

Sweet Corn patch broken up with onions.  Fall peas are planted along side the corn rows on each end of onions

New strawberry bed transplanted this spring.  Note the lack of weeds and runners are periodically removed

Sweet corn and yellow squash

3rd year growth of grapes

Third year growth of semi-dwarf apple trees

Steer gets picketed on various parts of yard during day.  I tie him to utility trailer that can easily be moved.