Rotating ride-on seedling planting machine - GIF

[Frank S]

Due to my having used several wheel barrow loads of droppings and soil from my chicken coop the grass grows greener in the vegetable garden than in the yard. since it hadn't fully composted over the winter. My combat to this is to simply pull the weeds then with a flat spade I am gradually removing some of the grass between the rows then using it as sod plugs for bare spots in the yard so far I am having good results the grass gradually becoming removed from the garden and the yard becoming covered in places where there never was any grass. It's a lot of work doing it this way rather than just tilling and cultivating between the rows but what the heck I have a built in sod farm why not take advantage of it. We've fortunately had enough rain fall this spring that the grass is not sucking all of the moisture out of the ground from the planted crops. There is an old saying up north in the corn belt that your corn should be knee high by the 4th of July most of mine is knee high and some is chest high. I expect some of it will be tasseled and begin to ear by the 4th of July.
My wife asked my why I didn't do like everyone else and spray round up of some other chemical to kill of the grass but I like my way better. Regardless of how much produce we get we have already had more come out of it than last year and this fall I plan on doing the same as last winter then I will cover the area with landscape screen after tilling it several times the screen will allow rain to go through and the screen will prevent the wind from eroding then next spring the ground will already be ready

[ranald]

Due to my having used several wheel barrow loads of droppings and soil from my chicken coop the grass grows greener in the vegetable garden than in the yard. since it hadn't fully composted over the winter. My combat to this is to simply pull the weeds then with a flat spade I am gradually removing some of the grass between the rows then using it as sod plugs for bare spots in the yard so far I am having good results the grass gradually becoming removed from the garden and the yard becoming covered in places where there never was any grass. It's a lot of work doing it this way rather than just tilling and cultivating between the rows but what the heck I have a built in sod farm why not take advantage of it. We've fortunately had enough rain fall this spring that the grass is not sucking all of the moisture out of the ground from the planted crops. There is an old saying up north in the corn belt that your corn should be knee high by the 4th of July most of mine is knee high and some is chest high. I expect some of it will be tasseled and begin to ear by the 4th of July.
My wife asked my why I didn't do like everyone else and spray round up of some other chemical to kill of the grass but I like my way better. Regardless of how much produce we get we have already had more come out of it than last year and this fall I plan on doing the same as last winter then I will cover the area with landscape screen after tilling it several times the screen will allow rain to go through and the screen will prevent the wind from eroding then next spring the ground will already be ready

Great stuff Frank. Your produce should be very tasty. Manual control of weeds/grass is always more physical and time consuming than mechanical & chemical. Fruit & veg always has more flavour when no sprays are used=esp corn=yum, straight off the cob. Salivating just thinking about it: who needs pavlov? Some & most veg & fruit at our local supermarket have very little or no odour and no taste due to irridation or spraying.

During the last couple of hours, my neighbour was puttering around our boundary with spray, despite strong breezes of about 10 knots & gusts double that: she stopped when I went out and called our dogs. I didn't smell the spray so was probably round up/glyphosate and not something stronger like Amacide. Strangely she had moved her precious horses to another paddock but had moved the cows into that one. (My car was borrowed/lent so I guess she thought no one was home.) Now it is raining as predicted. So the earth will have most of the residual runoff. The whole boundary will open up its seed bank of mostly weeds. Old farmers truth=one year of seeding & 7 years of weeding.