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Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2014 16:36:01 GMT -5
What do you do to get ready to plant your garden bed, and how early do you start preparing the beds?
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Post by bestofour on Apr 20, 2014 17:27:07 GMT -5
tillertom, I've done several things over the years.
When I first started gardening I would let the grass and weeds take over after the growing season and then tiller a time or two right before I planted the next year. We did that for years and it worked great. Never saw a squash bug. Then I started reading how tillering was bad for the soil and lasagna gardening was the way to go. So I got a bunch of cardboard and newspaper, made a compost pile and lasagna gardened for 2 years. Had more bugs and more problems than you can imagine.
So I took up the cardboard (the newspaper had gone home to the earth) and for the next several years we added compost all year long and at planting time made rows and planted. Not nearly as many bugs as the lasagna days. Then one year I planted a cover crop of rye and red clover - not happy at all. No matter how many times I mowed this crop to the root it would not die and when I planted the bugs were back in full force. So year before last, after reading on line about someones great experience, after the garden was finished I piled a ton of leaves on the big garden area and left them all winter. At planting time some of the leaves were removed (because there were tons of them) and some were tillered in. The produce was plentiful except for the squash which was murdered by squash bugs. I've read everything I can find about garden pests and a lot about squash bugs and this past year I left the big garden area open to the element. No composted material, no leaves, no cardboard, no nothing, no where for bugs to overwinter. Just cleaned up the old garden debris and left it alone. This season it's been tillered 2 or 3 times. The soil is dark and rich looking. We'll see what happens.
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Post by redneckplanter on Apr 23, 2014 13:03:17 GMT -5
well no secret here.rotfl leaves baby...tons and tons of free leaves..... sheet compost them.5 to six feet high.let em rot in slowly. forget about them. let nature handle it. no weeds....worms be happy..... ask paquebot about leaves nutritional value.from npk to trace elements. or train about feeding the soil. cover an acre or two 3-4 feet high. you can shred with mower or not. depends on your needs wants. the oldtimers would make raised beds this way with no wooden borders. weather it turns into leaf mold or pure compost you win. it takes tons of leaves to make 2-3 inches of what you want. but its worth it. its black gold.
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Post by bestofour on Apr 23, 2014 20:50:04 GMT -5
redneckplanter, we have tons and tons of leaves. I put some of them in the compost pile but there are too many to put all of them. The year I put them on the garden and left them all winter I didn't have 1 squash plant survive the onslaught of bugs. I only left them until the next spring. Was the bug problem because I didn't leave them long enough?
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Post by daylilydude on Apr 26, 2014 6:45:44 GMT -5
bestofour, I'm not redneckplanter, but I have to ask, you say that you left them until the next spring, did you remove them completely or till them in?
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Post by spacecase0 on Apr 26, 2014 19:37:44 GMT -5
the first year I start a garden plot: I till the soil, then I till in about 4 inches of mixed wood chips and straw (I should do 6 inches) then I till in 6 inches of leaves, about half rotted and half newish, this is done in the fall so the rain fills up the wood chips and leaves with water, I then plant and cover every bit without a plant with ceramic tile (rocks would work if I had them, or cardboard
the second year I just till in the leaves, at about 10 years I plan on tilling in more wood chips
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Post by bestofour on Apr 27, 2014 18:42:01 GMT -5
bestofour, I'm not redneckplanter, but I have to ask, you say that you left them until the next spring, did you remove them completely or till them in? Did I call you redneckplanter? Sorry. I didn't remove them completely. Like I mentioned we have tons and tons of leaves so we removed the top that were not at all broken down and tillered in the underneath portion that had starting the breaking down process.
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reubent
Pro Member
Posts: 389
Joined: May 2011
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Post by reubent on Jan 19, 2015 22:37:22 GMT -5
We've tried all kinds of things, and we do it when ever we need to except when it's really cold or too wet, starting in late Feb or early march clear till late summer. But my current style for future growing is to first cut the trees down and turn them into firewood, (everything that's big enough goes to the sawmill, sometimes sold and sometimes to my own mill.) then dig the stumps and bolders with the track hoe that will be back this spring. A dozer comes in handy to smooth things out or modify the terrain as desired. Then we need lime and soft rock phosphate applied, and some nitrogen of some kind. As I can I will start making biochar out of some of that firewood and adding that as well. Then comes one of two tractors, depending on size of the plot, a 15 hp kubota or an old ford 3000 to till, or plow and then till. Time to plant? That's done by hand with small plots, or transplanting on occasion, (a little self propelled transplating machine will be a future project) or with a garden way push planter when seeding larger plots. I just gotta get that refrigerated truck box mounted on a trailer before too long, gonna need it this year.
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indigogirl17
Pro Member
Blazing here again...90's and dry after aq period of 3 weeks of solid rain a few weeks back. .
Posts: 191
Zone:: 5b
Favorite Vegetable:: sweet corn, collards, turnip greens, yellow wax beans, Cherokee purple tomatoes
Joined: March 2011
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Post by indigogirl17 on Mar 16, 2015 10:09:31 GMT -5
I think this is a great evaluation and having gone through these various "tries", I wholeheartedly agree. I clean up everything at the end of the season, throw it on the compost pile which is then covered with a variety of oak and maple leaves. When spring finally comes, I uncover the very bottom of the compost pile, where are all the good compost is, with worms and put on my clean garden beds. Good results and i do "4 square intensive gardening" as i just have my city backyard.
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