So far, I think we've been doing a good job of keeping up with the weeds. Terry and Bev have been on top of it during the week and with the aisles being wider this year, Terry is able to till up the weeds saving us a lot of time. We really only need two people at the market every week so 2 weeks ago Terry stayed home and weeded before it got too hot and last week stayed back and Anne got a lot done on that 98 degree day on Saturday.
One of the weeds that is hard to keep under control is purslane. Although you can eat it and I've seen some people sell it at markets, we just try to get it out as fast as possible.
The other weed is hairy galinsoga. It's funny how after you've done a lot of weeding you develop a preference for certain kinds. The ones that come out easily make for a very satisfying job and the ones that have an intricate root system make you want to scream! Luckily these two come out easily and it makes a huge difference if you weed when the soil is slightly damp than when it is dry. The goal is to get weeds out before they flower because then you deal with a lot more than you want. We don't put our weeds in the compost pile, and instead dump them over the hill by our ravine.
In other news, we got a helpful hint from a friend about growing cucumbers this week. We've never been successful with cucumbers because of the cucumber beetles but she said that if you plant 3 radish seeds around each cucumber seed and let the radishes grow and go to flower, it eliminates the problem! We sure hope it works for us and we'll let you know how it turns out!
We've started another planting of arugula and are going to keep it covered the entire time because we've had a bad flea beetle problem.
My dad read that radishes can grow throughout the summer if they are shaded, so we are trying some more radishes in the cold frame. A few weeks ago it was evident that the radishes did not like the heat because they had a thick skin and were very woody. I will keep you updated on all of our experiments!
