This week we are practicing an important farmer skill: knowing when to abort the mission, give up, change the plan.
About a month ago, we had three acres of new field plowed for next year’s vegetables. The wet weather and our busy schedule has kept us from getting our cover crop in. For once I can say, thank goodness we are behind schedule. In the past month, the three acre field has erupted in Johnson grass. Johnson grass is a particularly pernicious weed. It grows from a fat rhizome deep underground and is virtually impossible to eradicate organically except by digging out each and every piece of the root. Disking simply spreads it. In fact, it’s pretty hard to wipe out with herbicides, too.
This week we took a good hard look at that plot and decided to change our plans. There is no way we can successfully grow vegetables in that mat of rhizomes.
Now we have to get the farmer to come back and turn over three more acres somewhere else. And we have to figure out what to do with our three acres of Johnson grass besides letting it slowly march into the adjacent crop field – which has plenty of the stuff already. Here are a few options: 1) get some cows. Johnson grass makes good forage. 2) try to find something that competes well with Johnson grass and plant that. 3) try to kill it by starving and drying out the rhizomes by disking the crap out of it in August. 4) sell the farm and run away screaming. Now that we have opened this Pandora’s box, we have to deal with it.
In other news, we have had some wonderful help this week from our friend, James Cox. With his help, we have gotten most of the t-posts for the tomato trellises in, mulched all of the tomatoes, set up drip irrigation, and have done a lot of hoeing. The first squash bugs have been sighted and squished, and Rosie the tractor is on strike with a bum head gasket. Just another typical week on the farm.
