May 24-30, Week 9

RuthAnn’s Weekly Garden Diary

Documenting Progress and Reflections in the Garden

My attempt to document the planting, growth, harvesting, and preserving of our family’s 8000 square feet of garden.

Northeast Iowa Gardening in growing zone 4

Last frost date May15, First frost date September 15

May 24-40, Week 89

The last week of May brings us right to the cusp of my favorite Month of the year! By
this time the bulk of the crops are planted, and we slide into maintenance mode!
The ‘What I planted’ section will now be replaced with ‘What we harvested’, although I
will continue to plant a bit here and there for fall crops or to fill in spaces.
What we harvested this week:

10 heads of lettuce (stored in 2nd fridge to enjoy over the next 4-6 weeks) How to video here.
Spring onions (for fresh eating)
Radishes (for fresh eating)

Other Garden Tasks:

The English peas are growing so fast! I strung a few more levels of twine for them to climb on!
Added a pile of compost around each tomato plant. Then a layer of grass
clippings.
We also trimmed the bottom branches of the tomato leaves. The combination of grass clippings and trimming the bottom leaves off protects to tomato plants from contracting diseases from the pathogens and bacteria that live in the soil and the compost.
• Put supports up for the tomato plants using cattle panels and steel T posts.
(Youtube video about this coming on Saturday)
• Daily weeding!

Let’s talk about weed control:

There is no such thing as a weed free garden. If someone tells you they have a weed free garden they are lying. But here are some truths about weed control:

There are some areas of the country that have much more weed pressure
than other areas. For example, lets compare my mom’s garden in Southern Pennsylvania verses my garden here in Iowa. There is much less weed pressure in my mom’s garden than mine
because she lives in a highly manicured community. Neighboring properties keep their
yards groomed, sprayed and neatly manicured. This means very few weeds are maturing to the point of dropping seeds and reproducing. This is why my grandma would say “1-year of seeds=7-years of weeds.” Because if you allowed weeds to go to seed in your garden you will battle those same weeds for 7 years. Your #1 weed prevention is simply to prevent weeds from going to seed and reproducing. In our area, Northeast Iowa, every road has a 6-foot ditch on each side (for holding snow and water.) These ditches grow every kind of weed and grass you can imagine. Every fence row between properties grows up with giant rag weeds 8 feet tall, goldenrod and many more species! In the fall when all these weeds are in seed all it takes is one day with 40 Mph. winds and all the weed seeds are traveling for miles! It doesn’t really matter at that point how weed free my garden has been or how many years in a row I have prevented weeds from going to seed in my garden. I often tell folks that the weed pressure in my garden comes from the skies.
Edge control is weed control. Maintaining neat, crisp edges around the garden keeps the surrounding yard from creeping in and taking over.
Using weed barriers works. Weed barriers block out light and keep seeds from germinating. Weed barriers can be plastic or fabric type ground cover, or organic matter like hay, straw, leaves, or grass clippings. Cardboard or newspaper works well too. My favorite is to use organic matter as a weed barrier because it composts and amends the soil, and I don’t have to remove it. In especially weed prone areas I will layer cardboard and then put organic matter on top of the cardboard to hold it in place. This is an effective way to block weeds for an entire growing season here because by the time the cardboard has composted the season is at an end and the weed pressure is gone.
Cultivating is an effective weed control method. While cultivating the top layer of soil between rows can disturb, uproot and kill tiny weeds, deep tilling will often bring more seeds to the surface. After my initial tilling for planting, I simply cultivate the top layer of soil to keep weeds from growing between rows.
Hand weeding as therapy Ok, ok, I admit, not everyone loves hand weeding and some of you are groaning about the thought of hand weeding, but before you leave let me tell you a few things and share my favorite weeding tools with you!
Weed in the morning before the sun dries up all the dew. The overnight dew makes the soil moist and loose lessening the grip of the roots on the soil.
Small weeds take a lot less effort to remove than big weeds! A simple scratch with a hoe or weeding tool is a lot easier than trying to uproot full grown weeds.

Now For My Favorite Tools:

At the very top of my list is this Japanese weeding tool! I wrapped a couple stripes of
neon duct tape around the handle to help me easily locate it because this tool is like an
extension of my arm whenever I am in the garden. With its short handle and angled blade, it helps me weed around plants. Its pointed tip helps me lift weeds with a tap root
right out of the ground.https://amzn.to/3PNWThJ

Next is this stirrup hoe. Longer handled to weed larger areas, this is the tool I reach for whenever I see a carpet of tiny weeds encroaching an area in my garden. With its dual sharp edges, it cuts weeds going both ways saving me so much time and effort. https://amzn.to/4uJ5jpB

The next item that I use almost every time I enter that garden is a vintage high wheel
cultivator. This one is perfect for cultivating the top layer of soil in the garden and
disturbing and diminishing tiny weeds before they grow big and need to be hand weeded. I found my favorite cultivator at an auction for $5.00. Agri Supply has one that has different attachments that I also use because the vintage one I bought doesn’t have attachments! If you purchase the one from Agri-Supply, tell them RuthAnn Zimmerman
sent you! We have worked together on Collaborations before! https://www.agrisupply.com/24-high-wheel-cultivator-push/p/12567A/

Reflections

I could write this week’s garden reflections about spiritual weeds in our lives but instead I want to encourage you in your gardening season! A garden with weeds still grows food! Your primary goal is to grow food! Make ‘growing food’ your mindset instead of the aesthetics of the garden! Especially if you’re in the season where you have infants and toddlers! Your time for a beautiful garden will come! For right now focus on growing food! Guard your though life while you’re in the garden! Instead of noticing all the weeds and scolding yourself for not getting to them look at what crops are doing well and speak OUTLOUD your thankfulness about that crop! Don’t leave the garden until your spirit is one of gratefulness and thanksgiving! Feeling overwhelmed and disappointed when you’re in the garden makes it much harder to go back to the garden the next day and is the fastest way to assure that you give up on the garden! Noone likes to go to a place that makes them feel like a failure! Make your garden a place of joy and worship regardless how many weeds are within your sight! Ask yourself why you feel like your garden has failed? If it is because you are comparing it to gardens you see on social media? Then let me be the first to tell you that back when I had littles and a garden, I sure wasn’t posting my garden on social media and there were many years that giant rag weeds were taller than me when we dug potatoes in September! The point was, we grew potatoes! It wasn’t a pretty garden, and it probably wasn’t as productive as it could’ve been, but we grew food!