Between Saturday morning and last evening, I have spent a total of six hours weeding the vegetable garden and more often than not the culprit is Digitaria sanguinalis - crabgrass! Thankfully we have had rain just about every day for the past week, so the garden soil - though seemingly dry on the surface - is still very moist underneath and has made pulling all of the weeds much easier. Chris logged some time in the garden on Saturday morning as well and we made some really great headway on the tomato and pepper plants areas. Between my weeding by hand and Chris' hoe and rake method, we were very pleased with our accomplishments Saturday morning. We were also stiff and sore as hell come Monday (my adductor and hamstring muscles, especially)!
Last night, I weeded while Chris mowed the lawn. I worked on the squash plants, the peas, and the green beans. I have to say I think I did a great job and overall, I am quite pleased with our weeding progress. We knew that weeds would be an issue in the garden this year. We took a previously lawn-ish piece of our property and turned it into a garden! How could weeds not infiltrate this first year? Especially the crabgrass...from what I have read, when it seeds, it puts out tons and tons of seeds!
I guess we'll just keep plucking this year and try to stay on top of it now that we've pretty much gotten most of the weeds out. Our hours spent weeding should mean that soon we will only have to go out for 15-20 minutes each evening to check the plants and puck a few random weeds here and there.
We put a lot of money into the vegetable garden this year - we rented a tiller for the weekend to turn the soil, we got three truckloads of compost and one truck load of sand, we put up a fence, and we bought the sprinkler and the 250' of hose it took to run from the house out to the garden. Next year, when (hopefully) the only cash outlay will be plants and seeds, I think we will invest in a weed control garden liner to help cut down on our manual efforts.
All complaints about weeds aside, everything in the garden looks amazing! Well, wait...there is one exception...the broccoli. I spotted a small Eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floradinus) in the garden last evening, which ran off as I approached. When I got into the garden, I noticed he or she had been munching on the broccoli. Perhaps it might be time for a faux owl on one of the fence posts! But other than the broccoli, everything else is just growing, growing, growing...and pretty soon we're going to have vegetables come out of our ears!!!
I'm really gonna need that pressure canner and that chest freezer...SOON!
Until next time, keep your eyes open for wild wonders!
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