A Busy Day at the VegHeadz Garden

Tackling a year's worth of weeds

From our garden coordinator Carole Hayes:  Green beans, cucumbers, eggplant, sweet peas, peppers, lettuce, and herbs were harvested this morning by Nancy & Bill, Yen, and Evelyn.  Anne Selland took them to the Kearney Center for the homeless.  Thanks to you all!!!

Janis gave us an impromptu WOW (Words of Wisdom) in the Forest Garden.  The Forest Garden is the southernmost part of the garden.  The entire garden slopes south.  So swales and berms were built into the design to prevent erosion and allow water coming downslope to be absorbed and maintained.  Cover crops are desirable on the tops of the berms.  However weeds can become prolific, especially after a pandemic year.  

Here's what she showed us.  It is not necessary to pull the weeds, roots and all.  A stirrup hoe is highly effective in mowing the weeds down to root level in short order.  Going over them once is sometimes not enough.  By removing tender new growth with the hoe weekly, which takes little time, the roots will be starved and eventually die.  They will not have enough resources to continue to put on new growth.  The chopped weeds (if they do not include seeds) can be laid in the swale to decompose and enrich the soil.  Then, new crops can be planted on the berm.  

Ready for cover crop

Three summer cover crops have been planted by BJ and Nancy on the berm just cleared--pearl millet, pink-eyed purple hull peas, and cream peas.  Buckwheat was planted as a cover crop in another area of the Forest Garden and is ready to be chopped and dropped. 

Janis also demonstrated the effectiveness of trap crops.  A few brassicas left over from the fall cover crop are large and bolting in the Forest Garden.  Their leaves are lacy with bug infestation!  But, there are no bugs in adjacent crops/plants/trees since they prefer the brassicas.  Brassicas, particularly mustards, are effective trap plants.  Furthermore, the blooms of the bolted plants are great for pollinators.  

We also had a visit from the Leon County Office of Sustainability.  We were delighted to show off our summer garden.  

The next area to be weeded.
Nut sedge is a challenge

Louie's edible flower garden

Dent corn with thick strong 
stalks, the right type for the three 
sisters

Butternut squash

The loofah is growing fruit

A well-earned rest at the end of the work day