I have this dream that I plant the farm with hundreds of plants, watch them come up, weed once or twice and then reap piles of delectable fruits and veggies...HAHAHA!!! This is more like the universe laughing at me than a dream. It's hard work running a tiny farm, I can't imagine running a commercial sized farm. One thing that my dad taught me is to weed when the weeds are small. Every week (not once or twice like the dream), I take a hoe and walk through the pathways and rows and knock down all of the small weeds. An hours worth of work every week will save you from a nightmare of never-ending toddler-sized-weed pulling. Really, when the weeds are as big as your three-year-old, you may want to just light the whole thing on fire and plow it under. Right now I am fighting spurge. Spurge is a horrible weed that comes through the secondary water. Give this bad boy an inch and he will take an acre, not kidding. The magical thing about this little weed is that he can re-root himself, so dig him up and flip him over so his roots can't touch the dirt. Horrible, nasty little things.
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| Spurge...my arch enemy at the moment!!! This is about as big as we let it get. |
Because we have opted to use no chemicals on our plants, I get a little more muscle building time with my biceps and the hoe. I also rake through the surface of the dirt once a week, but this is more for aesthetics...I like it to look really nice (I may need medication for this...). I just can't stand to let it look run down or not taken care of.
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| Corn, doing well. Someone told me I would never be able to grow corn...HA!!! |
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Fava bean blossoms. They are such a different plant,
I am so intrigued by them. |
All of the work pays off, believe me. This week, my kids enjoyed completely chemical-free, homegrown strawberries. They tasted so much better than any other strawberry I have ever had. Maybe it's all the sweat equity invested in them, but they are so good, sweet and exactly what I had imagined they would be like. The fava beans are finally blooming and setting fruit and I am planning on picking peas this week. I can honestly tell you that there is nothing better than what comes from your own hands and hard work. Knowing that what goes into my kids was grown exactly the way I wanted it to be grown is somehow very satisfying to me. I know that the kids enjoy it because they are so eager to eat what they have grown and helped with and it always tastes so much better...or at least that's what they both say!!!
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| Breakfast...they were so good! |
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| If only you could see my drool right now... |
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| I need more strawberry plants... |
I love reading your blog! I have secondary water and that spurge weed too. I didn't know what it was until now though. Your only supposed to weed once a week though? I get out almost every day! Mostly because I'm so excited to see if there's anything new happening in my garden. I sure hope that my 4-yo will also be interested in eating the garden veggies that he's helped me grow because right now he always says that he hopes there's no veggies in our food!
ReplyDeleteI hear spurge is highly nutritious. I know... wierd. I'll double check on that, but I'm pretty sure my mother used it in her green smoothies one year. I myself haven't tried it yet in anything yet. I'm still gathering up the courage.
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