02.09.08

What was I thinking?????

Posted in Veggies at 10:58 pm by Farmer

I spent the past two days trying to save our garlic and I’m only a third of the way done.  I am trying to remove our rye/clover cover crop from the entire garlic bed – that is the cover crop growing between each clove of garlic, and each clove is planted about 6 inches apart, and from in-between the two rows of garlic within the bed – it is a very tedious job.

Normally when planting fall garlic, we begin by broadcasting a cover crop of rye/clover a few weeks prior to preparing the garlic beds.  This allows the cover crop to germinate, after which we come through the field with a hilling tool, which makes a nice mounded bed for planting two rows of garlic.  In years past, the hilling kills all the cover crop on the garlic beds leaving a nice matting of cover crop between the beds that is mowed periodically through the spring into summer until the garlic is harvested.

This past season we never got around to broadcasting our cover crop in the field where our garlic was to be planted.  So when it came time to plant garlic we debated: Should we go ahead and broadcast a cover crop then hill OR should we make beds and just mow weeds in-between the beds? Me being the eternal optimist, thought that the hilling would throw so much dirt onto the beds that the cover crop wouldn’t germinate, so I talked Carl into broadcasting a cover crop. 

The outcome of this devastating experiment was that all the cover crop was thrown on top of the garlic bed, leaving basically nothing in-between the beds, but germinating perfectly right where the garlic is planted.  I have been told by cover crop experts that burying the seeds too deep prevents them from germinating but  I guess all our seed went near the surface.   So now I need to save the garlic.  I am asking myself why we planted 1350 row feet of garlic?  If this years garlic crop is harvested, which I am praying for, I expect it to taste ever so better after all this work.  I don’t reckon we will make this mistake again!

02.03.08

Freeing the Strawberries

Posted in Projects at 10:12 pm by Farmer

I just spent the entire weekend freeing roughly 600 strawberry plants from Henbit (Lamium amplexcaule) that is winding it’s way throughout the strawberries making it rather difficult to remove the henbit rooting system without damaging our strawberries.   I just took a package of frozen strawberries out of the freezer so that I remember just why one would spend two days crawling along the ground trying to remove the weeds from the strawberries.  . I will certainly enjoy a few unfrozen, wonderfully sweet berries then perhaps a smoothie.  I am praying that we have a decent crop this year because last year we experienced a late frost and drought conditions resulting in a reduced yield.  At the moment the leaves are very brown perhaps from the cold weather when we had temperatures hovering around 5 degrees for a few days.

One thing about winter weeding, I don’t feel the need to push myself like in summer when 4 acres of crops need weeding, because we only have an eighth of an acre to maintain between strawberries and garlic..  It is nice to go at a slow pace and enjoy the crows, bluebirds, and beautiful mountains!