Two Feet in the Dirt

Although pest and disease management are the issues that most readily come to mind when thinking of organic farming, keeping the weeds in check is actually a more consistent challenge. Starting in early spring and continuing into the fall, we spend time every week making sure that the crops stay ahead of the weeds.

In order to do this both effectively and efficiently, we rely upon a variety of techniques and tools. While we certainly do more than our share of pulling weeds by hand, we aim to minimize our time spent doing this by taking preemptive measures to help the crops outcompete the weeds from the get-go. Cover cropping the beds over winter and in between plantings during the season is a great technique. Quickly-growing cover crops will grow faster than the weeds and therefore smother them out, helping decrease the weed population in the bed for the crop that follows. Last year, we were lucky enough to purchase a flame weeder from our neighbors down the road. Mike uses this regularly to control weeds in both the beds and the paths. Before every planting, we go over the bed with the flame weeder. This burns up any weeds that have started to germinate already, meaning the crop that gets planted will get a head start on the weeds and hopefully outcompete most of them. 

This year, we started experimenting more with tarping beds, a technique that is common on small-scale farms such as our’s. We put down heavy black plastic tarps (called silage tarps). The black surface causes the bed to heat up underneath, stimulating weed seeds in the bed to germinate. However, they cannot grow because of the thick tarp covering them. Thus, many of the viable weed seeds in the bed will germinate and die before the crop is planted, resulting in a much less weedy bed! 

This week at the market we will have the first of this year’s spring onions and more kohlrabi! Check out our full harvest list below and we’ll see you at Burke on Saturday and Urbana on Sunday!

Farmers Katie & Mike

This week at the market:

• Lettuce salad mix
• Arugula
• Baby kale
• Spring onions
• Kohlrabi
• Radishes
• Lettuce heads
• Romaine hearts
• Bok choi
• Green garlic
• Hakurei turnips
• Kale
• Collard greens
• Rainbow chard