Sunny days and oodles of weeds

What an amazing last week of weather we have had on the after after the first rain of the fall.

The mid-70s temperatures are ideal for all the field work that we have to do in the next few weeks. Most importantly we have been spending a good amount of time weeding the fall and winter veggies.

This warm and sunny weather allowed all the dormant weeds to germinate after the rain and then grow rapidly. The forecast has nice weather for the next 10 days which means that our hands and tools are the only things stopping the weeds from taking over.

Getting them weeded now allows the plants to grow in the sunnier and warmer weather before it gets cold which slows down their growth significantly.

We’ve been using all the different weeding tools we have along with some hand weeding to catch up on the weeding and be able to dedicate more time to the problem areas.

For most of the veggies once their leaves grow bigger they shade out the weeds from growing but the quick growing crops with few leaves like carrots, turnips and radishes the weeds keep growing meaning we have to do more often weedings.

The majority of the fall and winter veggies are already in the field growing but we still have a good amount of lettuce in the greenhouse growing until they are ready to be transplanted.

We’ve filled one of our lettuce sections so we are spreading compost on the next area before pepping it with the tractor. The rain gave the soil a good amount of moisture that makes it easier to prep and the transplants will enjoy not going into dry soil desperate to take all the water.

We are in the last 10 days of October and the summer crops are decreasing drastically every week. Most of them we will be done harvesting in the next two weeks and for some this week may be the last.

With the season coming to an end for the summer crops we are pulling out the drop tape from the rows since the irrigation is done for them. That is also the first step in getting the field that have no fall and winter veggies ready to be sown with cover crop seed.

In November we will mow all the summer crops and then right before a good rain is forecasted we will seed the cover crop.