Remember what the field looked like early this spring?  Nary a weed in sight.  Here’s a pic:

Here’s what it looked like by the end of May.  Consider this a before picture:

All that green is weeds.  Wow!  I can’t and don’t want to spray chemical herbicides.  Besides, these are mostly perennials, primarily bindweed and Canada thistle, which, from what I’ve read, don’t respond so well to herbicides.  So what to do?

After some deliberation, I decided to try flame weeding.  The principle is simple, apply enough heat to the weeds’ leaves to cause the cells to rupture.  This wilts the plants, which then die, especially on a hot, dry day.  So today I tried it.  I used a propane fueled torch, carrying the propane tank in my all-too-neglected backpacking pack.  It worked beautifully!  Here’s the picture immediately after flaming:

Notice how the weeds all look a little sickly.  That’s because they’ve already started to dry up in the sun, and this was only a matter of minutes after I flamed.  Here’s the picture 24 hours later:

Of course, the two perennials are definitely not killed for good; they both store so much energy in their roots that they’ll be back.  But hopefully by the time they start regrowing, I’ll have planted through a nice thick layer of mulch that will suppress them long enough for the veggies to grow to harvest size.