Weed Prevention 101

Here's a few quick tips about preventing those annoying weeds in your garden. I already told you how to get rid of them once they show up (tiller, hoe, or my favorite...pull them by hand) but how can you stop them from showing their ugly little faces in the first place? Here's one trick we use in our garden



We use black tarps made of this cloth/plastic material. You can find it at your local hardware store. It comes in a big roll. We lay it down around our squash plants and cut holes around the plants. It's a great way to stop the weeds from growing around the viney plants. This year we're also going to put it around our pumpkin and cantaloupe plants.

I've also heard that you can put wet newspaper down around your plants and it will prevent weeds while it slowly biodegrades. Has anyone tried this? I think it would be very time consuming for our larger garden but it might be a nice alternative for a smaller space.

Another question for my readers (if there are any!?!?)....what in the world is this?



We found three of them in our radish patch. They look like carrots on the bottom but the greens are different. I googled purple carrot, purple radish, white beets, and nothing matches. Any ideas?

Finally, another quote from my mom:
We were picking more peas last night (so many!!!) and in order to reach all of them you have to lean over the onions. Our onion stems/greens are already over a foot high, which means they're hard to ignore. As we are about to finish picking, my mom stops, looks up with a weird look on her face and says,
"I smell onion?"

I wonder why!!!!

What's for dinner?

I didn't spend much time in the garden this weekend because I took a road trip down to Kentucky to visit my BFF, Dana, her husband Chad, and their son Anthony (I heart him!)



Sunday afternoon I did spend some time weeding with my dad, aunt Mary, and mom (yep, she helped again...although she was very cranky about it!) We cleaned up the beans, tomatoes, and lettuces. It's looking much better. Dad and Mary like to use tools (tiller or hoe) to weed but I prefer just pulling them out by hand, especially when the ground is still damp from the previous day's rain.

Since we have gotten so much rain lately, I have been eating most meals straight from the garden. A big salad for dinner every night! Sunday nights we always have family dinners at my parents. It's my mom's way to get us all together once a week, not that we need an excuse but the food is always yummy! Last night we had pork chops (well I didn't but everyone else did), a salad, potatoes, and peas. Everything but the meat came from the garden. Such a rewarding feeling!

I decided to lend a hand this week for dinner and cook the peas and potatoes. The snow snap peas were rinsed and the very ends snapped off, then I put them in a big skillet with some olive oil and seasonings. I let them cook on medium for about 10 minutes. They turn bright green when they're done! And they're delicious! You can cook them as long as you'd like but I like them to still have some crunch. Sorry there are no pictures of the end product, it was gone before I could get the camera out. But here's what we started with....




Even though the potatoes aren't done yet, we dug some up and they were excellent! I tried something new with them. I baked them in the oven on 425 in a glass dish that had been sprayed with Pam. Then I washed the potatoes and cut them into slices without completely cutting them apart. Then I melted some butter, added some chives (also from the garden) and seasonings and spread it on top. I baked them for about an hour but I could have put foil on top the whole time to speed up the process. I actually got a picture of the last two before I ate them. I'll definitely use this recipe again!


Just for fun:
My mom says the funniest things so I thought I'd start adding some of them to the blog. Here's her quote from last night:
We were watch a home improvement show and they were remodeling a boat house. They added fans with misters in them to help it stay cool and keep away the bugs. My mom said:
"Won't you get wet with mister?" No...really, mom! I love her!