Weed Prevention

The battle against weeds continues! It's life-long and multi-generational in both directions. Or maybe a better way to think about it is just that we work to favor some plants (crops that we harvest) over others ("weeds" that we don't harvest). I mentioned in a previous email that we're constantly working to prevent weeds from growing to maturity and making new seeds (some of them can make hundreds of thousands of seeds per plant). On the smallest scale that means hand-hoeing the rows and sometimes cutting or uprooting individual plants. Once an entire bed or more has been harvested, we can mow the remaining weeds all at once with a tractor.

Mowing a big section of weeds is great because it's so fast and easy, but unfortunately they grow back pretty fast and need to be mowed again. So a better solution long-term is to plow the weeds into the soil and seed a "cover crop" to take their place. Plowing (sometimes called "mold-board" because of the curved shape of the once-wooden, now metal tool) has a fascinating history going back thousands of years, but the basic idea is that one or more curved blades are dragged through the soil behind an animal or tractor, which causes the earth to flip over in what looks like waves you could surf on (if you were tiny). This turns your weedy, meadow-like field into mostly bare dirt, ready to be planted with something new.

But you don't want to leave the soil bare for any longer than necessary, so as soon as the plowing is done we cast our cover-crop seed, in this case a mixture of oats and peas. These are big seeds that will grow to cover the field quickly and prevent any new weeds from taking over (weeds grow fast, but their seeds are generally very small, which puts them at disadvantage in the early stages of growth). And the best part is that the oat and pea plants improve the soil for next year and beyond, adding nitrogen and increasing organic matter, so less fertilizer is needed in the future to grow a good crop.