A Sea of Green

Everywhere you look there is a sea of green. The grass is green. The trees are green. The field is green. And the rows of veggies and flowers are green but not all the green is good. While all that grass is great in the field and I can't wait to whack at it with my scythe and make some old fashioned hand-cut hay (even a farmer can have weird hobbies :) ), it is not so great (or easy) to get rid of where I don't want it, namely my planting rows. 

Each year I use a few new tactics to try to manage it and this year it is my ultimate goal (always gotta have a goal right?). I'm tackling it with tarps (to block the light it needs to grow), tillage (to whack it back), weed fabric (to stop it from growing while the plants have their own little spaces and since the other methods don't work while growing in that space), solarization (covering with clear plastic to 'burn' it out), and sometime just yanking it in frustration!

Hopefully this year will be it's downfall! mwahahaha!!!! but really, I need it to go just from my planting beds. It can have the field all to itself!

A sea of green under gray skies. All the rain makes the grass grow taller and taller which the chickens and ducks like.

Another sea of green but not the kind I was hoping for! All that grass likes to grow everywhere, even to engulf my rows of veggies and flowers. Sometimes the best thing is to whack it all down, a light till, and cover with weed fabric before take two with new transplants.

Before all those weeds and smothered crops get whacked down, I cut some baby greens that will be available this week.

The first butter lettuce heads are ready! They (mostly) won the battle against the grasses with the help of some weed fabric.

The next crops are growing fast and the grass is beaten back in their rows (for now)

The weed fabric doing it's job with some nice rows of young flower plants and head lettuce. I am a very 'live and let grow' kinda gardener and always had a ramble of veggies and flowers in my home gardens, but farming requires a bit more strictness, efficiency, and tough love when it comes to what you let grow where.

The grazers are on the grass

Hella helps find lots of things in the long grass, including tiny (and some not so tiny) gophers. You get' em girl before they gobble everything up! There has been a lot out here already this year.

What's available this week?

• Eggs!
  • dozen pasture-raised, rainbow chicken eggs 
  • half dozen pasture-raised duck eggs 
• Flowers!
  • Tulips
    • Rasta Parrot
    • Variety Bunch: a little white ones, a little red ones, and a little Bleeding Heart for even more variety
• Veggies!
  • Microgreens
    • Spicy Mix
    • Mild Mix
    • Cinnamon Basil
  • Butter Lettuce
  • Red/Green Lettuce Mix
  • Baby Power Greens (previously Stir Fry Mix)

Where to find it all?
I'll be at the Farmers Market at Libby, this Thursday from 3-7pm!

I'll be at the Troy Farmers Market, this Friday from 330-630pm!