Weeding Stupid

 I've tried different things to deal with weeds.

Trying to preventing them with 

• plastic mulch & landscape cloth
• Deep straw
• cardboard

Once they're there, I try to pull them up.  But I need to be sure it's a weed & not what I want there.  Its easy when they're grown.

These are peas in the row

There are sunflower plants scattered about.

And lots of weeds.

Its better when they 1st sprout.

Looking at this, can you tell what is weed?

I think this is my cucumber row.

At this stage of growth, you need to be very smart.  You need to know what your plant looks like & what weeds look like.

That requires knowledge & skill which I haven't developed.  

So this year, I'm focusing on being stupid with weeding.  Because when it comes to weeds, farmers use stupid techniques and we should be stupid too.

Farmers don't pick individual weeds out from amongst the plants.  The don't have an expensive app that photographs & ids each plant.  They run a tractor down the rows with a stupid cultivator that cuts off any plant that is between the rows.  So there's no intelligence needed.

To do this, they need to plant precisely.  If a plant is in the wrong place, it gets cut off at the roots.

If it is a plant grown from last year's crop as a volunteer, down it goes.

I put string down the middle of the row & tried to get all my seeds right under.  Then, if I see a sprout that is too far from the line, I know it is a weed.

I also made a wheel hoe that I can push down the row & cut the weeds off at the roots.