Sacrifices to Reality

Unfortunately, we are not going to have all of the blocks prepared in time to plant a winter cover crop in them. Therefore, we have to decide which areas we want to focus on for the time being. We chose a small block of beds in the middle of the garden.

Given that we are starting late in the season, we had to submit our ideal to our idea. That is, if we want to have as much of the space mowed as possible - to have the largest possible garden - then we have to be able to mow faster. While we promote the ideal of mowing without the use of a weed whacker, we understand that we don't have the skill to wield the scythe effectively. So, we made a sacrifice to reality in which Chris used a weed whacker to finish the job.

Weed Whacking

After mowing the grass and raking it into piles, it was time to hoe the beds.

The strenuous activity is becoming less pain inducing, but this set of beds came with a problem. A weed that spreads by rhizomes, sheep sorrel, is creeping all throughout the block. Therefore, Chris had to take more care in hoeing by both digging deeper and removing many of the sorrel plants.

This cost valuable time in our race to sow all of the cover crops on 08 November. One interesting consequence, however, is that we’ll be running an extremely informal experiment with regard to sowing seeds and the phases of the moon.

The next step is to rake the clumps out of the beds and into piles. Then, we can spread the fertilizer and sow the seeds. Hopefully the beds will be prepared before the rains come in a few days.