Ok so Jessi has been razzing me for not posting on here and I can’t fall asleep so here goes. The picture is because every post needs to have its own picture, its night as I write this, I have been listening to REM lately and the EP pictured, in addition to having a gargoyle as the cover, happens to have a song called “Gardening at Night”.
The weather has been fantastic the last few days and I feel that my seasonal affective disorder is finally descendent. Its spring from here on out! After I wrote a paper about film genres or something Jessi and I checked on our seedlings at Morning Sky Greenery. They have been doing well for themselves. What worries me is when we have to put all our tomatoes into bigger soil blocks! I’ve also been trying to grow some parmex carrots in the front yard and they haven’t germiinated yet. I’ve been trying to keep them moist and everything, but they got snowed on last week during the cold snap. There is no chance they’ll be ready for my grad party now, but hopefully they’ll still become carrots someday.
We went back out to Claire’s and more accurately measured out our plot which is just about exactly 200 x 100 which Jessi said was closer to 1/2 an acre than 2/3rds. This makes me think we ought to dig up some more land thats available on the other side of the driveway because we want to grow lots of corn even though we know its not all that profitable.
We also met with some folks that live around the area. One fellow has a tractor which used to belong to the people who lived on the land were farming (if that makes sense). And he seemed to think we’d have absolutely no luck getting rid of the sod thats on our plot right now. He advised Roundupping. Then the next neighbor who is a real farmer said we should just till it all up a couple of times and we’d be fine. I”m inclined to be optimistic and believe the latter guy and not the former. I have to say everyone seems so nice and helpful and supportive about our vegetable endevor. I’m inclined to be pessimistic and was expecting more confusion or hostility or something…
If you don’t plan to have a lot of mulch on your garden (think at least 6 to 8″) tilling it multiple times won’t help with the grass. You’ll have a ridiculous amount of weeding to do if you till the sod in. If you have the time, you should dig up the grass and turn each clump over so that the grass is buried. The grass will completely die in a few days and then you can till. You won’t have to worry about the bits of grass coming up all over your garden and you won’t have to use any chemicals. The downside is that it takes a lot of time and effort.
yeah there are machines that turn the sod over like that too. i talked to this old guy named Herman who grows onions and thats what he said to do. we may have to do it manually! we’ll see…this guy at the tiny farm blog had some advice for me: http://tinyfarmblog.com/2007/04/14/breaking-new-ground/
i’ll have to find out for sure if the guy with the tractor has moldboard plow.
like i said the old guy said we could just till it a couple times – i dunno! there are going to be lots of weeds to pull no matter what.
another possiblity i read about is spraying vinegar. i’d do that and before i planted anything lime the soil and till again (i had been planning to do this anyway).
OR we could just start the whole thing on fire!
I think we’ll have A LOT of mulch on the garden. There’s no way we could handle an intensive/organic garden that size without it.
Thinking back two summers ago, the garden in our back yard was overrun with grass. But last year with just 1-2″ of straw, we hardly did any weeding, and didn’t see any grass. Granted, the first year is always the worst controlling grass, but at least in the areas where we have transplants we should be able to mound up quite a bit of mulch.
We’re getting close to running short on time, at least in some sections of the garden… We don’t know anyone who can flip the soil over, either. The old guy down the street said we should just till it all up and run a hand-held tiller through each row every week. We’ll be able to work the soil quite a bit where our transplants are going in June, but as soon as we can get the ground worked, a good many seeds will need to go in!
… But I vote for the Fire!
update! i’m thining about buying some corn gluten meal: http://www.organicfertilizer.com/1000.html
The vinegar idea reminded me, boiling water works wonders at killing things. Better than burning, in some cases, because it kills the roots more effectively. Ethan and I used to use it to kill the weeds that came up in our driveway, using leftover pasta boiling water. That would also be very labor intensive for your purposes, but it wouldn’t leave anything unnatural in the soil.