The beets in the picture this week are grown in a field full of thistle. In fact, much of our growing space is covered in Canadian Thistle at this point. We have spent many, many hours pulling, cutting, spraying (with vinegar), flame weeding and tarping it in efforts to rid our ground of the noxious weed.
Our current plan is to continue spraying horticultural vinegar on and tarping our worst sections, as both of these methods have shown promise. Then we plan to try a winter oats and peas cover crop to attempt to smother it. Our hope is that the dead cover crop plants will act as a mulch in the spring.
There are a couple of other methods including biological controls such as the thistle gall fly and thistle weevils that we haven't delved into too much yet, but plan to research them extensively this winter. If you're not familiar with biocontrol, it's essentially using a predator or parasitoid to help control the populations of a particular pest species. Biological controls can be an important part of growing organically, and there's a lot of interesting trials being done in this area.
As far as the end-of-summer veggie madness goes, the summer crops are still going strong. We know that they can get monotonous at this time of year, but they only last a bit longer, so we hope that you'll enjoy them while they're here!
If you're looking for a couple of ideas to use your summer veggies...check out these links!
NYT Summer Recipes (too many good ones on here not to include the whole page!)
