...beginning to show its face. Plenty of moisture and perhaps just enough warmth. (Continued below the photo.)

This manure is a mix of field peas, oats, and hairy vetch, mostly legumes, which fix nitrogen in the soil. Also, supposedly good for “weed suppression.”

The idea here is to grow this cover crop until it is somewhere between “knee high to a grasshopper” and “almost as high as an elephant’s eye.“ Then mow and till into the soil, probably in mid June. Then plant beets (we are down to our last pickled jar) and squash—crops that can do without tending. This approach is the latest in recent thinking about the galinsoga weed problem, which for the past several years has negated the possibility of growing beets.