|
Post by Andre on Jul 3, 2013 6:05:48 GMT -5
Here is what my South American corns looked like today. Don't you remove all these weeds ?
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 3, 2013 9:31:03 GMT -5
Don't you remove all these weeds ? Normally I lie to you and only post photos of freshly weeded areas of the garden so that you don't see how weedy my garden really is. The truth is that I am one person trying to take care of more than a hectare, and my family situation prevents me from spending sufficient time in the garden, so the weeds grow prolifically. I may run a cultivator through the corn patch once more to knock down the weeds between rows, but I'm unlikely to weed within the row. The corn is tall enough to take care of itself. My primary cultivator is broken. I don't expect to repair it before winter. I dislike using the secondary cultivator. It is geared wrong and designed poorly. My work for today is to swap out the pulley system, and bend the tines back into shape to try to make it more useful. I wish that I would convert it into a scratcher. That would seem more useful than a rototiller. The strategy of cultivating between rows but allowing weeds to grow within the row is fairly typical for me. For example, here is what my cantaloupes looked like yesterday. There are about 150 meters of row like this. I weeded between plants once when the cantaloupes were small. I'm unlikely to do it again. I ran the tractor down both sides of the row. I pretty much have the attitude that if a plant can't compete with weeds, then it is too weak to grow in my garden. It's easy for me to keep peas and garlic weeded because they grow vigorously first thing in the spring when there isn't anything else to do but weed while I wait to plant other things. It's easy for me to keep tomatoes weeded because they are planted so far apart that I can run a cultivator through the patch in perpendicular directions. Squash are easy to weed because I plant seeds about a foot apart. I really aught to plant melons by hand instead of using a seeder. If they were precision seeded, wider apart than my hoe, that would make weeding easier. This is one of my fields. It extends to that power pole beyond the green truck.
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Jul 3, 2013 14:35:38 GMT -5
Hey, if i9t makes you feel any better Joseph, I don't weed the place where the rice beans go AT ALL. Any weeds that are directly in my way when I plant get ripped out, but beyond that I tend to leave the area alone. Partly it's because rice beans are 9/10 of the way to being weeds in and of themselves. Left to their own devices they can basically SMOTHER anything else to death (unfortunately the kind that will do this is the one that WON'T flower for me; the one that will is a lot tamer) or why at the same time I'm tearing my hair out trying to get the "good" ones to grow I have to spend half my time rooting out volunteers from everywhere else from the piles of rejects I threw in the mulch piles for the animals to eat (the animals must hate me, the eat every seed I want to stay planted and then bury most of the seeds I want them to eat) Partly it's because any disturbance of the ground seems to act like a magnet for the critters both the direct destroyers (those that actually eat the seeds and shoots and the indirect ones, those that chew through the plants in their quest for the bugs they can now smell where I've been digging. Plus they provide something for the beans to climb on (if they climb) so I save on stakes. At the end of the year I cut back or remove any tree saplings that have popped up (there is a weeping cherry near the area and it's base is INTENT on taking over the garden. And any of a handful of plants I KNOW will take over (like remnants of the Chinese Lanterns that were there before I started planting the beans) get removed, but other than that, the grasses, buglosses (buglossi?) and any strawberries with pink flowers have a free pass there (I'll actually specifically avoid the pink flowered strawberries, since they are the ornamental one's my sister put in a few years ago. The yellow flowered Indian strawberries however get yanked. By The way, Andre, in that list of weeds you put down, what is cock's spur? I went online to look it up and the only plant I could find with that name is a tropical tree (Erythrina crista-galli ). Is it a translation of a local French name for something like Xanthium (what we know here as cocklebur)
|
|
|
Post by Andre on Jul 3, 2013 15:02:42 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by rowan on Jul 3, 2013 15:33:52 GMT -5
Whew, I'm glad I'm not the only one with weedy beds. Same as you Joseph, I tend to show newly weeded patches so I am not too embarassed showing how my beds really are, not that they are overgrown but not picture perfect. I am in the same position, nearly a hectare doing it by myself. Sometimes you have to do what you can and as long as it works not really care what others think.
|
|
|
Post by Andre on Jul 3, 2013 15:49:21 GMT -5
Next year I plan to mulch intensively with at least 5 cm of straw or rameal chipped wood. This is supposed to : 1/ avoid weeds sprouting ( no light) 2/ limit watering (less evaporation) 3/ improve germination ( more heat) 4/ improve soil (carbon decomposition)
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Jul 3, 2013 16:27:06 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by steev on Jul 3, 2013 21:49:06 GMT -5
You may have noted that I post no photos of my farm; I am not only techno-phobic/lazy, but I am committed to weedrows, where my trees are planted. If I can control the weeds in my planting lanes, I am content. Meanwhile, the weedrows, where I throw what I clear out of my planting lanes, are composting and mulching my trees, feeding pollinators, providing nestsites for native bees, and sheltering reptiles, amphibians, and accursed other creatures (voles). I note, also, that the dread star-thistle, puncture-vine, and bind-weed do not make it through the thick mat of (mostly their) decaying kind. I do enough physical labor that I welcome any mental labor that reduces the physical demand.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 3, 2013 21:55:44 GMT -5
Joseph, that corn looks really good considering how different your garden is from Cuba, the Amazon Rainforest, and southern Mexico. I'm curious to know when you planted it.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 4, 2013 0:55:58 GMT -5
Joseph, that corn looks really good considering how different your garden is from Cuba, the Amazon Rainforest, and southern Mexico. I'm curious to know when you planted it. May 14th. About a week later than I typically plant my first crop of normal corn (excluding the cold/frost tolerant trials).
|
|
|
Post by Andre on Jul 4, 2013 3:20:29 GMT -5
How many leaves do you have ? I plant at the same date and I have between 6 and 10 leaves (depending on cv).
|
|
|
Post by mnjrutherford on Jul 8, 2013 13:50:27 GMT -5
Steve, we are starting to do that with our weeds as well. There are a couple of exceptions to the rule, the main one being the horse nettle. THAT gets put into the "trash trash", meaning that we don't even compost it. It leaves the property all together. For the most part, we throw weeds into the terra preta. However, with the really tall weeds in the corn, I'm starting to lay them down in the alleys with the same idea of having them compost/mulch. No complaints yet.
Joseph, how tall does your popcorn typically get? At the moment, we have some that is about 7' tall, tapering down to about 4'. All planted at the same time, but the taller stuff is in a sweet spot.
Most interesting is that the Ambrosia, which was planted at least 2 weeks after the first corn was planted, is now all tasseled and starting to throw silks in earnest while all the others are about half into the process.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 8, 2013 14:17:58 GMT -5
Joseph, how tall does your popcorn typically get? 7 to 8 feet
|
|
|
Post by mnjrutherford on Jul 9, 2013 10:51:12 GMT -5
hmmmm... Curiouser and curiouser.... I have to get off my duff and get some soil tests done. Still, looks like this will be the year we have great corn all the way around.
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Jul 9, 2013 22:53:57 GMT -5
I'll post some photos tomorrow after harvest. I've been out in the field munching on Paradise Sweet Corn I tasted it too early, just right, and a bit into the starch stage. It was very sweet and reminiscent of Silver Queen. Great corn taste. More later. The kids are in the kitchen ruining my supper.
|
|