He plants peas, a cool weather crop very early in the spring.  In this warmer valley, the weather allows us a longer growing season than up in the mountains, so we can get two crops in succession in the same fields.

After the peas are picked, he turns the plants into the soil where they rot.  Peas are “nitrogen fixing” plants—meaning they take nitrogen out of the air and put it in nodules in their roots.  When these “legumes” rot/compost, the nitrogen and other nutrients are released into the soil.  This is called “green manure.”  He occasionally also puts some cow manure in the soil as well.

The rows are “hilled up,” meaning that the soil of the rows is built higher, by about 6” than the lower troughs that run between the rows.  He plants his seeds in these hilled up rows.  Then he irrigates down the troughs between the rows from water from the ditch system.

His method of weed control is to hoe the weeds by hand when the vegetables plants are young.  Then when the vegetables get taller, more weeds appear, but they mostly stay shorter than the vegetables.  He said that these shorter weeds then shade the soil around the vegetables so that less moisture is lost to evaporation.  And the smaller weeds don’t interfere with the larger vegetable plants.

He has one field that has yellow corn and sweet white Silver Queen corn.  And in the other field, he had bush string beans (as opposed to those that climb on a pole, “pole beans”), cucumbers, squash of different kinds, and lots of zucchinis.  He still has fresh onions for sale, but I didn’t see them growing.

I thought that you would enjoy his very practical method of growing vegetables!  And his vegetable stand is a great place to meet your friends!  Guru Sangat Kaur from VA (Guru Sadhana Kaur’s mom), and Guru Daya Kaur showed up there as well while I was there.

Siri-Gian Kaur