Weeding Days

Been busy in and out of the field this week!  The past three days were perfect for WEEDING... dry, sunny, and slightly breezy.  That way the weeds pretty much desiccate once you have them out of the ground. We are trying to take advantage of the "gift" of a corn field... the stalks are a hassle to deal with in the tilling and planting equipment, but there are completely different weeds in corn than in vegetables.  In our case, easier weeds for organic control.  You can see that there just aren't many weeds coming up yet except that dratted corn stalk residue (most of the weeds in this field start later in the summer).

Above is our middle pea planting and first round of head lettuce.  We estimate that the March/April role reversal has pushed our spring crops back about 3 weeks, but has no impact on our summer crops.  What usually happens is some crops (like those lettuce) speed up their growth and generally ripen more or less on time, and others will run a week or two later.  (Vegetables are in as big a rush to grow up and reproduce as we are in a rush wanting them to grow up to be eaten!)  Since all the summer crops (beans, squash, tomatoes, etc) were in the greenhouse (or still in their seed packages), all the snow and cold had zero impact on them.

We weed using four main tools... first, our cultivating tractor (which we are bring up next week, so we don't have pictures of that in use yet).  Second, we use our trusty wheel hoe:

The wheel hoe has a bunch of different blades and is essentially a hoe attached to a big wheel (just like it says).  The advantage is that you are using more of the weight of your arms to push the hoe around, so it tends to be slightly faster and slightly easier (though your shoulders get tired).

We switch back and forth between the wheel hoe and our third form of weeding implement and my favorite, the stirrup hoe (which I *promise* pics of in the future... somehow I forgot yesterday in all the weeding).  The stirrup hoe, like the wheel hoe, has a cutting blade that can be used going forward and backward.  In addition the stirrup hoe has a bit of oscillation on the blade (so it wiggles back and forth when you are using it), which makes it comfortable to use at a variety of standing positions.

Both the stirrup and wheel hoes have similar cutting blades which are meant to be used BEFORE the weeds are more than an inch or two high.  It takes some practice, but you want to gently cut with the blades just below the surface of the soil:

Above you can see the before and after of the wheel hoe action.  You can't really see weeds yet because they are pretty microscopic (which is the best time to weed... before you see them!).  Ideally, frequent (since it's fast and easy to do with these tools) shallow weeding before weeds becomes a problem helps your crops grow best.  Additionally, shallow weeding with slicing blades (as opposed to a traditional hoe) has the added benefit of not bringing new weed seeds up to the surface, which is key in organic weed control systems.

In our case above, you can see that there is a bit of a soil crust.  Soil crusts for a range of reasons, including when there is low organic matter (which ours is a bit on the low end), where the soil structure is poorly aggregated (so the soil has what is called poor "tilth"... this is not a problem in our fields), or when the soil gets rained on without much plant or cover crop protection.  The bed above (and all of our spring beds) were tilled and then snowed on and then rained on and then planted (over the course of five weeks without any re-tilling), so we are pretty certain the snow/rain combo is to blame!  Either way, we think the soil (and the plants) are glad to see that crusting weeded away!

Oh, and our fourth and final weeding tool... our hands.  Which we generally only end up using if anything gets ahead of us and grows past that perfect microscopic state in all the pictures above!

And see all the rocks above... well, we were supposed to be picking them out of the field, but we started finding fossils, which distracted us from the duties at hand!

We have water!

Hooray!  Our irrigation system is underway.  We started putting it into action yesterday and today to water in brassica transplants. Here's our old fashioned and new fashioned systems (actually, the watering can is just for priming the pump).

It's a gas powered 6hp trash pump, and is actually *new* which means it's one of the few things on the farm that turns on without any little tricks involved.  The bigger gas tank on top means it can run for a pretty long stretch, if needed.

It draws from the pond.  Matt sunk an anchor down with a float on top, so the inlet is suspended mid-way from the surface and the bottom.  There is a filter on the end (so we don't suck up any fish).  (There is also a secondary filter that will go on for the drip system, but we don't need that until later this month.)

For the past two days, we have just used it to water in seedlings.  That's when you drench the seedlings right after transplanting, which helps their roots make good contact with the surrounding soil so they take better to their new surroundings.  One of the hose bib connections is below.

Right now, our pump and water pressure is total overkill (we had to dial everything way down to not blast the plants with the hose), but as we start seeding again early next week, we will be hooking up our overhead irrigation (the "big gun") which waters 1/3 an acre at a time, and will need all the water pressure we can get!

So far, we are very happy with how the soil in the fields handles water.  It's a loam, but a bit on the silty side, so it holds a lot more water than the sandy loams we are used to working with.  The surface dries out pretty quickly (and it drains well enough to work within a day or two after rain), but when you water the ground, it stays wet for a couple of days.  However, with the 10 day outlook pretty sketchy on rain, we are happy knowing that we now have water in the fields should the plants need it.

Remember all those spring pictures?....

... Well, we take that back.  On Sunday, April 22nd we checked the weather at 11pm and went to bed, expecting a 30% chance of rain.  When we woke up Monday morning, this is what we saw: That would be 8 inches of snow crushing our hard-working caterpillar tunnel.  Which had all our plants in it that were hardened off and scheduled to go into the ground (which is why they weren't in the larger greenhouse (it was totally fine in the snow)... you can see the corner of it at the right).

We dug them out... some looked fine, some seemed totally crushed, and put them all into the big greenhouse to see who survived.  After a day, we realized that we were fortunate.  The tunnel probably collapsed late in the night (right before we got up), so none of the plants were burned by the snow, and after 2 days recovering in the big greenhouse, we were amazed that our losses ended up being zero!

What's more, as a week of nights in the lower 20's blew into most of NY, we realized that perhaps my back injury (which kept us from transplanting all those caterpillar tunnel plants out into the field on schedule), was a total saving grace... because if those plants had been in the field, the bizarre weather would have likely caused a lot more seedling damage!

Instead, now that the weather has evened out (and seems like it will hold... knock on wood... for the next few weeks), we are putting the happy little plants into their new homes:

Since it's been so cold and dark, the plants were fine hanging out an extra week in their flats in the greenhouse.  And this week is PERFECT for transplanting:

It was so misty up here, we couldn't see each other 100 feet away!  Here's Matt putting in more kale.  Cloudy, damp, and misty days are the *best* for transplanting, since they minimize pretty much every plant stress.  With this whole week looking to be humid and cloudy, transplanting is flying by... kale, chard, lettuce, leeks, and most of the onions are already in the ground!

I'm even getting bonus physical therapy for my back with these great mud weights that form on our boots in the field!

While it was so cold... we finished potting up all the remaining hot-weather plants (eggplant, tomatoes, etc).

On the docket for this week... irrigation system installation (pics to come), and finish getting all the spring seedlings into the field!

Odds and Ends: Germination, Spring, Supplies, and a Mulch Layer!