The Importance of Weeding

As a temporary sun break suddenly appeared early yesterday, I decided to weed the areas where I had planted the beans and squashes. Thanks to the rain, the weeds had decided to take over the bed.

I had planted the beans and various squash about two weeks earlier than our climate normally allows thanks to the warm weather we had been having. Then without warning Alaska decided to send some of her cold air our way and most of our summer vegetables had halted in growth. And then further still we suddenly received the rain, which is great for the peas and lettuces, but is decidedly not so great for a majority of our plants as they are completely sodden from the excess water. Or, in the case of the in-ground vegetable garden area, weeds have decided to grow exponentially large!

So I decided to take advantage of our half-day of nice weather we should have and kicked the dog out of the house to play for a bit, but she was uninterested so I let the chickens out to see if that would keep her occupied while I weeded out the areas that were in desperate need of some breathing room. Of course Kendra, the broody one (and yes, she is still broody, poor girl) was squawking up a storm and feathers all puffed out and Lucy, the dog, was completely intrigued and kept chasing her around the yard. I on the other hand started to pull weeds, carefully making sure not to harm the tender young vegetable starts that had sprouted.

When I planted the seeds for the zucchini, sugar pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns, fairytale pumpkins, green beans and purple beans, I planted the entire package of each figuring about half of those would sprout and from those choose which ones to keep in the ground. Well, thanks to the sudden cold snap and successive rain I’m down to one jack-o-lantern, one green bean, three sugar pumpkins and three purple beans. What didn’t rot from the rain was probably choked out by the weeds, and from the sheer amount of weeds this is not far from the realm of possibility. Looks like another trip to the feed store is in order as I need more chicken feed and cat food and if the happen to have chicks maybe a couple of those to get Kendra to snap out of it. Okay, so maybe that last part is a joke, but I wonder…

Anyway, so after weeding out the major weeds, some of which were quite nasty and intrusive and hopefully not any of the sunflowers I planted, I took a hand rake and broke up the small weeds that were near impossible to pull before using the Garden Weasel to till the remainder. I must say those years of adding compost and garden soil to these areas has greatly improved the soil’s texture and apparently fertility too as evident by the excess of weeds that seem to have come from nowhere. Now it is time to replant and hope that most of this November weather in May and June is over.