Weeding

Pramod and I decided that in our free time we would weed. We made a plan to weed every row once before leaving the farm. With 40 something rows, we needed to weed 1 row a day (plus we plowed some of the rows with Paul in order to plant in them).

We started slacking by the end of the time here and some rows were more work than others (ex. tomatoes dominate the rows and its harder to get down under the plants). We didn't get them all done, sadly. Another problem that we found was that those rows that we weeded at the beginning of our time needed to be weeded again at the end. We did actually weed a couple of rows twice. They just keep coming back.

We put paper bags around the base of the squash plants to discourage weed growth. The nice thing about this is that during the winter the paper will decompose and just be good for the soil. Some plants have large enough leaves that they need weeding when they're small but they'll shade out most of the weeds later.

Paul told us that after plowing and planting seeds, weed growth isn't bad because it helps protect the seedlings as they begin to grow. As they get big enough to need all the sunlight they can get, however, weeding is very important.

Weeding is definitely a problem that can be hard to stay on top of with a garden as big as Paul's garden.