My husband and I were remembering the time that we had what appeared to be tumbleweeds in our vineyard. This was the fall of 2013 when we were preparing our vineyard for the cover crop that we were going to put into the vineyard alleys. The tumbleweeds were created by this device, a cultivator.
During the growing season, because this was the very first year that we planted, we had only bare soil on the vineyard floor and a lot of weeds took advantage of this lapse on our part to grow in profusion. We planned on growing a cover crop and I blogged about this in
Methods of Seeding a Cover Crop on November 2, 2013.
What that blog neglected to show was the result of cultivating a field full of weeds. It looked like this.
This picture on the left, shows a closeup of one of the rows that was cultivated. The cultivator not only pulled up all the weeds, it also pulled out more rocks! It was a mess! Included in this photo is the three-pronged hoe that I was using to gather all the dried weeds together.
I thought that I could put all the weeds into a pile so that we could put it into the trailer and haul it away. My husband was a bit more realistic than I and convinced me (after many attempts) that we could just leave the dried weeds in the alleys and put down the cover crop seeds. It would take far more time than we had to pick up all of the dried weeds. I capitulated!
This is what a full field of dried weeds looked like viewing the field from south to north:
Although this view is from the north to the south, unlike the previous view which is from south to north, on November 18, after sowing the cover crop seeds, this is what our field looked like. Not a trace of the tumbleweeds and little green growth in the alleys!
It's a miracle to me how the tumbleweeds vanished!
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