a simple salad and weeds

Out of the chaos comes lunch. This salad is a throw together at the last minute kind but you really couldn’t tell it’s beautiful and delicate. The base is just some simple head lettuce that we have growing. Nate (intern) picked some peas, I picked beets and turnips we sliced up and put in raw, and we grilled some left over bread drizzled with olive oil and cut them into strips. Threw some feta in there tossed it with a balsamic vinaigrette and lunch was served. Perfect for a long, long day of weeding out in the hot sun!

Now that things are growing and taking shape it’s a constant fight with the grass and weeds which are trying to make their way back into the beds. There is not enough time to weed the whole field so we have to pick and choose which beds to weed. What vegetable can tolerate some companion weeds and which cannot. Garlic for one likes to be alone. Garlic does not like weeds or grass getting in on its well earned moisture and nutrients, so garlic gets weeded. When you can’t tell the difference between a seedling that will turn into food and a seedling that will turn into hay, you’re in trouble, it’s too late. I have a few beds like that and I’ve just left them to their own devices. It’s like that on new ground, the pros and the cons of a clean slate.

Weeding gives me an opportunity to understand the soil. I notice moss down at the end of plot 1 and I look up ideal growing conditions for moss and find out why moss is growing there and is this a good or a bad thing? Same with certain weeds and wild flowers, why are they growing here and not there? Learning about the soil gives me the tools and knowledge to work in cooperation with it rather than to just keep battling it and trying to make it bend to my needs only. So weeding has been an adventure of sorts. This is how I get through it. That and my I-pod
I’m not sure how I went from a really great salad to weeding, I guess is on my mind:)