Jesus once told a story about a farmer who found his crop heavily infested with weeds. Rather than attempt to dig the offending plants out, possibly causing damage to the roots of his wanted crop in the process, he decided to allow wheat and tares to grow together until harvest time. When that time came, he reasoned, he could pull everything up at once, keep the good stuff, and throw away the bad.
September marks a "pull everything up and start over" season in our gardening year. During the long, hot summer, "weeding", if done at all, mostly meant chop-and-drop...that is, cut the weeds off close to the ground and toss their carcasses on the ground where they provide a cooling and water-conserving mulch for the roots of our fruit and vegetable plants. But as the weather cools and the days shorten, most of our summer crops are at the end of their life span, and it's time to get serious about digging up weeds, roots and all, prior to planting fall crops.
Bermuda grass is a particularly invasive and persistent enemy, one whose roots can go down several feet. We know it's impossible to eliminate entirely without the use of herbicides, which we really prefer not to use in close proximity to things we plan to eat. Mint, Mexican primrose and Mexican petunia, and a large cloverlike creeping plant are also invasive, although not as deep-rooted. Now is the time for these things to go away from places they are not wanted, at least until next spring when we'll repeat the process.
We're leaving some plants that are still producing in place...eggplant mostly, and a few surviving tomato plants that might be coaxed into setting a second crop. We thought about digging up this melon, which has produced nothing but rampant vegetative growth...or so we thought. As we peeked through its leaves this morning, we found two good-sized honeydew melons that were hidden by the leaves on its vines. I think we'll wait on digging up the Bermuda grass that is growing in here for a bit longer.
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