This morning I finally found the time to get over to our community plot at the COG garden here in Bowmanville. I really wanted to get my plants into the ground over there. I have cucumbers and peppers and squash, and wanted to seed some beans and sunflowers, too.
Well, I don’t know what I thought would happen to an organic garden plot left to its own devices, but it sure wasn’t this:
Oh. My. God.
It was ALL WEEDS.
Some of the weeds there were tough, and a lot of them were those spiky weeds that prick your fingers, even with gloves on, and had to be dug up with a spade. Luckily I found some sunscreen in the car or I would have had to go home earlier.
I was there for three hours today and managed to weed only about half of the plot. The upside is that there were a lot of volunteer tomato plants in there among the weeds, which I left alone. The previous plot owner had plum tomatoes in there, so maybe these will be plum tomatoes, too.
I managed to put up a tee-pee trellis contraption for the cucumbers, and planted them, but that’s all I got in the ground, along with one anise hyssop plant.
While I was planting my cucumbers at the base of this thing, a young guy came into the garden and introduced himself to me as Jordan. He looked like he was playing Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He had put leaves and grass into his hat, presumably to keep his head cool. He said to me, “That’s a crazy system.” At first I thought he meant the whole weeding one half of the plot thing, but now that I think of it I think he was referring to my cucumber trellis. WTF? I think it’s a great system, and I hope to have a wall of blemish-free cucumbers later this summer. Beats letting them lay all over the ground.
Some photos of other people’s plots are in the COG Garden, Bowmanville Flickr set.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
wow that’s insane! How come weeds grow so much and the plants I want grow so sloooowly!
I think it’s a crazy-good system, if you know what I mean.
I think it’s a good system… almost exactly what I’m growing my peas on!! I thought I’d try tomato cages for my cucumbers (apparently that’s one of the only things they’re good for).
wow that is a neat contraption. Did you build it yourself? I don’t see why its crazy it’s like a fence. That’s what I am using in my garden. I planted all my cucumbers along the fence and it worked out great.
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