The Main Site

Here is a shot of the main site. As you can see, the winter grasses have died down from the first herbicide treatment. The green weeds starting to push upward are white top. I treated those a couple weeks ago but it only held them back. White top actually has some use in floral arrangments and years ago, we would see small crews with rental vans out in non-farmed fields cutting and bundling it up. They would sell it to florist shops in the area. Since food on my table is more important than a decorative floral arrangement, I plan to destroy every last one of them. They produce a lot of seeds and take over if you let them. Today we are going to have use of a tractor and disk to do the initial work. The ground is still fairly wet from the rain we had last weekend but once it is opened up, it will dry quickly.

This area is about thirty feet from the domestic well that services the house and has a 3/4" hose bibb available. Standard fittings from the local hardware store will get the irrigation system going. I haven't completely decided how I should water everything, but since we know starting with a 3/4" outlet, things can get behind quickly in a heat wave. I plan to run a good schedule this summer so I don't have to rename this the "Dust Bowl Project". I'll definately use drip lines on the tomatoes and peppers. I'm undecided on the melons. The best melons are grown with ample water early in the growing season and hardly any after the melons begin to ripen. The strategy is to water alot early on to encourage the roots down deep and then quit watering all together once the main set of melons are just about full sized. For that reason, I will likely use furrows to water between the rows and shoot for some good long soaks in late May and June. Of course this means I need to have the ground completely loosened up and the disk will only stir things down a few inches. My crystal ball tells me there is going to be some serious manual labor going on the next few days.