On 08/26/2016 03:22 PM, Pavel314 wrote:
This being the first summer in my retirement, I vowed to keep up with weeding the pumpkin patch. When they were little sprouts on their widely separated hills, I'd run the tiller between them every week or so to remove most of the weeds, then hand-weed close to and on the hills.

Once they started running, they totally covered the patch. Tall weeds are growing among the vines but I can't get to them to pull them out without risking stepping on pumpkin vines and crushing them.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about it, the pumpkins are thriving, spreading out as far as they can go, and there are already a variety of pumpkins and squash forming on the vines.

Paul


Hi Paul,

What the guys have me doing is harvesting the weeds and plowing them
under for compost. It works very well. Weeds are apparently
excellent collectors of sunlight and nutrients from the soil.

But, I think the weeds started to talk to each other and now
I am hard pressed to find any of them, except dandelions,
which I pickle with vinegar. (I am afraid to bury dandelions
as the keep coming and coming and coming.)

I am now relegated to using vegi table scraps from
the kitchen.

:-)

-T