We’ve been getting rain fairly often and it sure has helped the gardens. All the vegetables are doing good and we are anxiously awaiting the first cucumber, tomato, and squash.
Another thing the rain has helped is the weeds. Weeds are just part of making a garden, just like hard times are part of our lives.
We let the weeds in the big garden get ahead of us. It took us about three days of working to get it back in shape.
Usually we’d work all day in the hot sun to get it sorted out, but this year we decided we would only work early mornings no matter how long it took to finish it. Of course with weeds you’re never really finished 🙂 We’ll have to start back at the beginning of the big garden in a few days.
For the first time ever we had squirrels eat our corn. They’ve stopped now, but they really did some damage. We’ve went back and replanted here and there so even though we hadn’t planned on a succession planting of corn this year we’ll have one anyway thanks to the squirrels.
There’s different ways to attack weeds. Matt’s preferred way is to use a hoe. I’d much rather get down close to the ground and pull up what I can and use a trowel to dig up what I can’t. Even though I’ve been gardening all my life I’ve never mastered the use of a hoe and sometimes chop down what I’m trying to grow.
Although weeding is an annoying part of making a garden, I’d much rather pull weeds than to fight bugs that love to eat our growing plants. Matt calls them pestilence.
I’ve made a run of pepper spray to battle the squash bugs. It’s the only thing we’ve found that works well. Notice I said works well—it doesn’t completely eradicate them. But it does keep them at bay.
The only thing that will take them out completely is picking them off by hand. That works fine for the big ones, but not after their eggs hatch out. I remove the eggs to prevent them from hatching, but I usually miss some.
I’ve tried all the things folks say to do from planting marigolds to laying pine laps around. None of them have worked for us.
One thing I haven’t tried is to wash the plants with soapy water and then spray it all off with a hose. Somehow I just can’t get myself to try that one, but maybe I will eventually.
The pepper spray will flat run the big ones out which makes for easy picking. There are many recipes for pepper spray out there. You can find the recipe we use here. The website gives several warnings about working with hot peppers. I wear gloves to make it and have had no problem with the scent being overpowering for me, but if I’m spraying in the garden Matt has to leave because it brings on a coughing spell for him.
Last night’s video: Special Early Bird Supper in Appalachia | How We Fix Our Old Timey Canned Sausage.
Tipper
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I can relate. I was hoeing the weeds in the bed I planted teddy bear and mexican sunflowers in, and accidentally chopped down one that was about 6″ tall. I was not happy!
I’m with you, Tipper. I do best pulling weeds by hand. It’s hard work. My hoe is reserved for snake killing. 🙂
Tipper, have you tried a hula hoe? I’m finding I am more accurate with it than with a garden hoe and it is easier on the back. Like you, I still get on my knees pretty often to pull weeds.
June I have but I’m not very good wit it either 🙂
Our big garden is just down the road at my Grandparents house. They have both been gone over 20 years. The rows are much longer than your big garden but are not as wide as yours.
This is the first year it hasn’t been fully planted. With taking care of Mom there just isn’t enough hours in the day to take care of the entire thing.
we have always planted 6 rows of corn. 3 rows at a time and 3 weeks later we always plated 3 more.
This year we only did 2. 1 early and 1 three weeks later. I will never be able to eat it straight off the cob again with my teeth gone. Somehow it just won’t be the same cutting it off the cob.
Tomatoes,Lettuce bed, Cucumber,Peppers,Potatoes,Cabbage,Squash,Corn and Watermelon are the things we have always grown. Did this year as well but didn’t even use half the garden space. I am slowing down fast. Can’t do half of what I used to do and with taking care of mom just not enough time.
Like you and Matt I have to go at 6 AM to beat the heat.
Praying for Paw Paw Tony.
Weeds are not my problem, it’s grass. I have some kind of grass here that will send down roots 6″ into the ground before you can even see it at the surface. If it’s anywhere near the plants you’re trying to protect it will bring it up too when you attempt to pull it up.
Ammons, I think you might be confusing your long root grass with sweet gum tree sprouts! I pulled a very small sweet gum sprout up by my hand yesterday and it already had a 2 inch tap root. I am teasing with you.
What a great photo of Matt in the big garden. I feel I can almost smell the air and feel that mist on my face when I look at it.
“The storm has passed, the field is calm,
the air is fresh, after the summer rain,
to start with, timidly, like a psalm,
after that intensely, sprout the weeds plain…“
I’m in the same boat of fighting weeds! Everything is wild and lush here. A beautiful time of year.
Tipper, if you get a chance look up a speed hoe. It’ll blow your mind how easy it is to remove weeds with that thing.
As with most things on this earth, the more we try to change things, the more they stay the same. I have found this true to the extreme when it comes to the necessity of pulling weeds.
Morning everyone. We also have had too much rain. We are in the upper Delta of Arkansas, so we are never “dry”. But this year is crazy. We can’t keep up with the weeds and grass growing EVERY WHERE. I didn’t even start a vegetable garden. I use the weed eater every morning. The next few days I will have to start over. Our “city” of 2,000 people is self sufficient. We have our own schools, Fire dept. Police and a DG Market. Our city guys cruise the streets and roads all day picking up branches and whatever, so they used a tractor with the biggest lawn mower attached and did what they could. I still have a lot of weed eating to do. The neighbor felt sorry for me and my son, so yesterday while mowing his property he came across and did a little for us. That’s a lot of fuel to use on us. We only have 1 1/2 acres but it grows too fast. Now, if you think I’m exagerating about the wetness. We have a couple of little mud volcanoes in the dirt. The last few days I have been reading about Arkansas’s land. Arkansas will reclaim what was built on. When people say the forests are disapearing. Arkansas’s forests are coming back. 1 or 2 hundred years ago our city was surrounded by water. You had to use a boat to go to the city. They did some drainage here so we have roads and streets, when it rains we have streams everywhere. The mud volcanoes? LAWN LOBSTERS. I thought skunks and bob cats are bad, now pinching creatures. Yuck. One thing I learned about this place. When you see a forest, it’s hiding water. Our property is the greenest shady place around here. But there’s things lurking under it. Anna from Arkansas.
Tipper – regarding the challenge of getting rid of weeds – the popular and accepted chemical usage left me fighting for my life after a minimal pesticide exposure and after many months of seeing many doctors, allergists, naturopaths, specialists etc. I was told to there was nothing they could do to help me, and they said I would not survive. I was diagnosed with severe to life threatening sensitivities and allergic reaction to all the chemicals that is used on our food and floral gardening and even sprayed in our air to kill foliage, mosquitoes etc. I was also left with thyroid and other health issues from it. It changed my whole life as I once knew it. Every day is a challenge for me, as this affects what I eat, what I am exposed to in the air and in skin contact. The chemicals used do not wash off and actually can contaminate the whole plant and anyone with sensitivities who eat the produce can have reactions. We do live in a scented and chemicalized world making it challenging for those of us who have such sensitivities and allergies – and there are many of us ‘out there’ walking among you all. On a lighter note: I love the photo today…the misty foggy morning, the garden view and Matt working to beat the weeds and the heat. Blessing to you dear ones in Wilson Holler.
After years of gardening in the ground and fighting weeds both by hoeing and pulling them by hand, I decided to just do raised beds. I started out using large tubs and noticed there were very few weeds to pull. After a couple of years growing in tubs I had my husband build a couple of raised beds. The weeds were very few in them as well, the first two years. This year the weeds have literally taken over the raised beds. Besides the weeds, for the first time in 28 years of having a garden in my back yard where deer walk through all the time, but only ate the blackberries that run along our property line, two of my cucumber plants were ate. They were all vining beautifully with lots of blooms, but only two out of five plants were eaten. My husband and I figured the clean cut of the vines had to be dear, because the rabbits or squirrels would leave nibble marks, plus they couldn’t take the entire vine out in one night. We’ve had a lot of properties around our area sold with lots of construction on them. Those properties were all woods, so we are thinking the deer have lost their food sources and have just discovered our garden. It was a good run for 28 years not having anything eat my garden, well except some bugs, but that’s a fight every gardener deals with no matter what. I told my husband and others jokingly, well I never ate the blackberries on our property because that’s the deer food. All these years I’ve never harvested any blackberries for that reason, until the other morning. The beautiful ripe blackberries were just to temping this year, so I picked a handful to eat. They were delicious. The next morning, two of my cucumber plants were ate over half their vine growth. I figure it’s the deer letting me know hey, you ate our berries, so we ate some of your plants. I’m joking of course, but after 28 years of me not eating their food source and them not eating mine, it all changed because I ate a handful of their food source. LOL
Garden pests are indeed a pestilence. They, along with mosquitoes, chiggers, noseeums, flies and such, were put here to keep us humble. My family was generous with DDT spray and dust in the cow stalls in the years after WWII. I know I have the stuff in my tissues, but I’m still kicking. Now they say we are ingesting bad stuff like microplastics from drinking bottled water. I’ll take garden pests and all the above over driving on the interstates in Florida any day.
Praying for Papaw Tony!
Hi there! The folks from True Grit, Meghan and Andy, use some kind of organic thing to coat the corn seed with before planting that makes crows sick and they don’t pull up the corn after they eat it once. Maybe that would work for you with the squirrels! Thanks, as always, for the great entertainment.
Were there weeds in the Garden if Eden? Did Adam’s job description of “dress and keep” require weeding? One thing worth a thought, many (maybe most?) of our worse weeds were “fetched on”. They are not native. I like Matt’s ” pestilence”, just says it all in a word. I’m so sorry about squirrels in your corn. They ate all my P&C corn last year. Once they start, they are relentless. “Something” has started again this year, tearing into 4 ears (so far) that are too young to even have kernels formed. Your words about working mornings reminds me of my Grandma. She’d work 2-3 hours in the morning, do other things through midday, then go back to the garden in the evening. She never hurried just worked steadily and well. Only the good Lord knows how much “garden truck” and canning jars she gave away. Seems if you left her house empty handed she felt bad. PS: our daughter gave me a Japanese garden ‘knife’ years ago that I use for planting and weeding. It looks like a belt knife (and I carry it on my belt some) but the blade is very thick and strong.
“Weeds” are just plants you haven’t yet found a use for, it has been said. Of course, if they’re choking out the sown plants, you don’t have much use for them.
We always mulched with old hay. It kept the weeds down and when they did make it through, it was easier to pull them out. And it kept the produce cleaner. The hay degrades and enriches the soil.
I find that hay has too many grass seeds in it. Wheat or rye straw works better for me when I can find it.
Good morning Tipper, I’d love you to make a video on the making of this pepper spray. Y’all. have a lovely Wednesday! Blessings, VirginiaBred (my name I post under on YouTube)
Have you tried Neem oil? You can spray the leaves of the plants. If you spray the blooms it will keep the pollinators away. I use it on my Hardy Hibiscus to keep Japanese beetles away.
We’re in a drought in Virginia; we haven’t had rain where I live for almost a month, and before that we didn’t have much going back to January. Even our snow and ice this winter was “champagne powder,” it was so dry. Even our weeds are struggling!
good morning friends and family, if good Lord’s willing will be going to see a dentist today, won’t be any teeth pulled yet, but maybe we can get some x-rays made, get a plan together, praise God for the community helping place
in Dahlonega Georgia, they have volunteer drivers, we’ll be traveling two counties over to Forsyth, God bless you friends have a great day
Good morning Tipper!
I’ve used a mixture of dawn dish soap, mouthwash, and water to keep bugs off plants. I’d put the mixture in an old Miracle Gro hose sprayer. It seemed to really help me with my flower beds.
Thank you for the blog posts! I also really enjoy y’all’s YouTube channels. They’ve been a bright spot in my days.
Many blessings to you and your precious family!
This will probably upset some of the members, for weeds in the garden, we would hoe and then plow very close around whatever it was with a mule and plow and in later years with front mounted tractor cultivators. For bugs and other insects, Sevin dust or Malathon was most often used. I remember when I very young in the late 50’s my Granddaddy mixing up a 5 gal bucket of arsenic and using a homemade broomstaw broom and brushing the top of his Irish potato plants to kill the bugs. He did not use this on green beans and such or at least not after they began to put on beans. Using granular guano ( now fertilizer) and Bulldog 33% nitrogen (sody) for fertilizer and these things to kill bugs, I guess eventually killed him, he only lived to be 83 years old. I have ate home grown vegetables grown in a similar fashion all of my life, I am 72 years old and according to today’s health experts it will eventually kill me. During the last two days I have sprayed 6 gals of knock off Roundup formula weed killer on unwanted weeds around my home. I buy 2.5 gallons of concentrated formula at a time and mix my own up for about 50 cents a gallon.
you mentioned broomstraw broom, My grandmother used to have one of those, she had it tied together with rubber tube out of a car tire for a handle, I think of her when I see the broom sedge in the field over here, near the house, if I could make me some of them brooms and get down to the festival, I’m sure somebody would buy one, daddy Mama used 7 dust when I was a kid, God bless you have a great day
Ain’t no way I would use Roundup around my house. I use Killzall. It’s cheaper than Roundup, has more of the same good stuff (glyphosate) and works better. Is that what you use?
This comment was intended for Randy!