Just got back from the allotment. Two tomato plants in the open, side by side. One a MoneyMaker and one a 'blight resistant' Crimson Crush. Both equal amount of green tomatoes. The Moneymaker ravaged by blight The Crimson Crush unharmed!!!!
I've been lucky that my adjacent spuds escaped and got harvested before that hit.
Anyhow, I have some more requests for advice. First I'll set the scene.....
Bed area 15sq m barely touched by me this year. The soil is nice loam, but it was covered by tall weeds and a fair amount of marestail. Just one or two dandelions. No brambles. The weeds were little pink beads of flowers and some had gone to feathery seed, so I was probably unpopular. In the interest of bare minimal effort to meet cultivation targets, today I cultivated it as follows....
Ran over it spiking it and loosening it with a fork
Tugged and teased off weed topgrowth by hand attempting to take roots. All weeds into a bulk bag for taking offsite.
Raked and roughly hand weeded the big bits of greenness
Half heartedly hand pulled any black bits of marestail roots.
Attacked it with an azada, again half heartedly removing marestail and obvious weeds.
To give perspective, I spent just under 3 hours on 15 sq m. The ground was then bumpy as hell and loose.
A very quick rake over and half hearted raking. Left very roughly level and not exactly a fine tilth.
Sowed with mustard seed manure crop and roughly raked in with a lawn rake.
Note the number of times I said half hearted. That's the clue to my questions.
Now...... Jansman can answer first. Should I have made much more effort to do a spanking job, with deep digging, riddles and hands and knees or does he commend my 'efficiency' and minimalist approach?
Next. How the devil do I tend the manure crop of mustard since I can hardly hoe it?
Will I have to wade through it to keep plucking marestail or will the marestail be pretty dormant now? If I do wade into the bed, will that really hurt the mustard crop?
Will I regret not scrupulously levelling the site?
I expect to leave the mustard crop for too long so it may get as far as going to seed. Will that be too wrong of me? When do I get to dig it in and do I do weeding at the same time??
I have 3 more beds to do similar to. One is tarped over and not too weedy and one is weedy, but contains my strawberry plants. Should I try to manure crop them all, with the same rough and 'efficient' approach, or would I be better just spreading a bit of old horse manure on top and covering them over(not the strawberries, obviously)?
What else could I have done better, especially in light of trying to suppress the marestail? I really don't want to be a perfect attendant to detail. I just want to achieve a fair crop for a fair amount of effort.
I'm not proposing to grow anything much until next spring.
I hope that made sense. and that I haven't gone down to far in your estimation.
