This being the first summer in my retirement, I vowed to keep up with weedi ng the pumpkin patch. When they were little sprouts on their widely separat ed hills, I'd run the tiller between them every week or so to remove most o f the weeds, then hand-weed close to and on the hills.
Once they started running, they totally covered the patch. Tall weeds are g rowing among the vines but I can't get to them to pull them out without ris king stepping on pumpkin vines and crushing them.
Maybe I shouldn't worry about it, the pumpkins are thriving, spreading out as far as they can go, and there are already a variety of pumpkins and squa sh forming on the vines.
i only go after the worst weeds that i hate. the rest get a free pass. the squash plants here don't leave a whole lot of anything alive underneath them.
Congratulations on the retirement Paul, did mine in 2007 and am very happy.
We've never grown pumpkins but we have grown other big squash, they seemed to like year old wood ash for some reason as we planted them in a place where we had burned several old stumps I pulled with the tractor. They covered everything for half an acre so the pumpkins are probably killing off the lesser weeds by shading them and sucking up the nutrients. I wouldn't worry to much about the tall ones, you can always get them out after the pumpkins are harvested.
Hot this morning and we've had gentle rains passing over for about five hours now and the temperatures is still close to 80F but at least it's not 95-100F right now. The grass and gardens are growing like the proverbial weed.
What the guys have me doing is harvesting the weeds and plowing them under for compost. It works very well. Weeds are apparently excellent collectors of sunlight and nutrients from the soil.
But, I think the weeds started to talk to each other and now I am hard pressed to find any of them, except dandelions, which I pickle with vinegar. (I am afraid to bury dandelions as the keep coming and coming and coming.)
I am now relegated to using vegi table scraps from the kitchen.
Do you have any concern that you will be spreading disease by burying the old plants?
I created my next years bed for garlic yesterday. I thought I did such a good job last year until my harvest sucked: small and pink (alkalinity).
This year I dug it all up again and redid it with vegi scraps (mostly melon), peat moss, and Dr. Earth's GEneral purpose organic fertilizer, with a little of the original dirt mixed in. I knew something was very wrong when I had to use my ax to dig up the old bed. :'P
I have been saving melon rinds in hopes of attracting worms. And, yes, although not your exact words, but it ain't soil until it has passed through the alimentary track of a worm.
Some of the old bed dirt (I wouldn't call it soil) was harder than the rocks I hit with my ax!
I had planted a garlic clone from last year's harvest into a plastic pot to see when it sprouted, if it did. And I remember you telling me you planted right after harvest. This week it sprouted three beautiful monocot leaves in is now about 8 inches tall, so I figured it was time to replant.
I have been watering the new bed to get it all settled in. In a few days I will replant with the best cloves from last year's harvest.
I put my earwig traps out by the new bed too. Those daemon spawn love melon rinds too.
I have got a lot of beautiful plants this year (THANK YOU ALL!). This is the first year I have actually gotten peppers too! I mix them in with my purslane in my salads. Yummy!
yes, she eats them, but now she says she feels guilty about enjoying them, i'm trying to get her to get over it and continue to enjoy all the stuff she likes. her favorite is macaroni and tomato juice.
no, we rotate planting and i don't fight late blight (which we get every year).
so arid there i dunno how anyone can grow veggies well.
you can wait, it won't hurt it. just keep it in a dark cool place until you can get it planted. the best time would be in the fall before the cold rainy season starts.
i'm sure they will. :) i have some in the worm buckets.
great news! :)
see, you're getting it, figuring stuff out.
i've never grown eggplant here. so you now know more about it than me. :)
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