Sunday, June 8, 2008

Weeds & Pea Trellis

The plastic that we used to cover the potatoes worked really well to increase the soil temperature. The potatoes sprouted quite quickly but so did the weeds. I removed the plastic last Thursday to find the entire area to be very green with tiny little weeds. Derek got the hillers out when he got home from work and hilled up the rows which pretty much got rid of the weeds.



Weedy potatoes before hilling



Potatoes after hilling, so much nicer



Derek checking the potatoes after the hilling

We also finally were able to trellis the peas. It took a few hours but it went quite well. We'll see how it holds up when the strong winds come. The peas are still a few inches from the trellis but hopefully this week they will be able to start climbing. I've been reading alot the last couple of weeks about the benefits of trellising and as far as I can tell the yield will be higher and it should make picking the peas much easier. In the past we've just let the peas grow on the ground with no trellis but picking was such a pain and it was hard to keep them weeded.



Trellised Peas, so pretty



A pretty sky picture towards the community pasture

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3 comments:

Unknown said...

Your potatoes look so good...dad must be proud! Hehe. Are the potatoes in the back...like on the way to your woods?

Jen said...

Hey MB. Well you can't see that close but the potato hilling job wasn't perfect. Some potato sets kinda got hilled out of the rows, a bit of tractor issues we'll say!!! Overall it worked pretty good, much better than last year when I did it all by hand. Now that was hard on the back. They are in the first field behind Margie's house. Where the horses were last year. The carrots are there also and the squash and cucumbers will be going behind the potatoes, fun fun

Unknown said...

What sort of mesh did you use in your pea trellis? Did you attach it with plastic twine? Looks fantastic! - Gloria, PuraVida Farm