JUNE AT LEWIS CREEK FARM

June is almost summer here in the north. We’ll get some days of good hot weather, and in a rare year a bone-fide heat wave, but by and large it’s late spring and often still quite wet. The early planted crops are starting to fill the fields and the weather is finally just warm enough so that the plants are really growing properly. We start harvesting the first field crops in June. Spinach and lettuce are the first crops to follow May’s asparagus. The most eagerly awaited crops are strawberries and peas. The first good picking of strawberries is usually about June 20-23, and we usually get 3 good full weekends of strawberries.

Here we are getting a head start on the weeds in June. The crop is barely up and the weeds are still almost invisible.

The peas start the last week in June, and we usually have peas for 4 to 5 weeks. Of course, good crop growing weather is good weed growing weather as well. We don’t use herbicides(chemicals that kill weeds) on most of our crops, so this is when the cultivating starts getting serious. The whole trick to controlling weeds without herbicides is to get the weeds while they’re still small. We often cultivate each field once a week and that means that most of the weeds are being killed before they have even broken the surface of the soil. It’s so much easier and more reliable to cultivate frequently than it is to wait until you’ve got a visible problem. This is a lesson you can take home with you to your own garden: Hoe your garden once a week whether it needs it or not. Just give it a quick scuffle on the surface, quick and easy, and you’ll head off those terrifying weed jungles of mid summer
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