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Post by daylilydude on Aug 22, 2018 4:14:27 GMT -5
Do you put your garden to bed for the winter or just walk away and come back in the spring... If you prepare it for winter... how do you do it?
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Post by paulf on Aug 22, 2018 7:24:19 GMT -5
End of season clean-up so far as I am concerned is the most important part of gardening. All remnants of the growing season gets discarded so that any disease or pest is removed from the area. That means pulling, cutting, trimming all annual plants. Perennials get trimmed or cleaned around thoroughly. Then the entire garden gets a fall till. If it is the year for soil testing, I do that in the fall and apply nutrients if needed so it gets tilled in. All the tomato cages get sprayed down with a bleach solution and stacked for winter (they also get a spray down in the spring before planting season).
Then me and the garden rest for a couple of months.
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Post by bluelacedredhead on Aug 22, 2018 7:45:52 GMT -5
I agree with paulf, that cleanup is essential in autumn. I leave seeds and berries (ie rose hips, ornamental pears, etc) on the flowers/trees for the most part for the birds and (ugh) squirrels to feed during winter. But the veggie garden gets a thorough going over. I don't bleach like he does, but I do send diseased plants to the municipal composting facility (very large state of the art) instead of trying to compost them here at home and risk reintroducing the same problem.
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Post by brownrexx on Aug 22, 2018 7:48:14 GMT -5
End of season clean-up so far as I am concerned is the most important part of gardening. I totally agree. I also remove all dead and dying plants from the garden and discard them in a compost pile in the woods far away from my garden. If I have bean beetles, I bag the plants and lay the bag in the hot sun for several hours to kill them, their larvae and hopefully their eggs. I usually put the bag out with my trash just in case it still contains eggs. I have never bleached my tomato cages. I leave them outside beside the garden during the winter and I feel that the cold, ice and snow will sterilize them. Most of my tomato diseases come from the soil or the air and I can't avoid those so I don't bother with the cages. I do a fall tilling and incorporate my compost pile into the garden and then I leave the soil bare for several days to allow my chickens and the wild birds to pick it over looking for bugs and pupa. I apply a layer of compost and then grass clippings or straw to my asparagus bed after I cut down and discard the ferns. Asparagus beetles lay their eggs in the berries so I get rid of the ferns. Then I cover the entire garden with a thick layer of straw. This insulates the soil from freeze/thaw cycles and allows the earthworms to stay closer to the surface for farther into the year. When it gets too cold they burrow deeper into the soil. This straw becomes my mulch for the following year. In Spring, all I have to do is pull back the mulch and plant.
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Post by pondgardener on Aug 22, 2018 8:20:14 GMT -5
I clear out each garden bed as the season winds down, bagging/boxing all the plant material to be placed in the trash. A huge amount of water hyacinths are chopped up with a machete, combined with leaves, manure, grass clippings and kitchen vegetable waste, and added to the compost bins. Compost is added to the garden beds, along with a sprinkling of alfalfa pellets, turned into the soil and covered with a few inches of pine straw. Some beds, depending on how the season has been going, are planted with a cover crop of hairy vetch, to provide lots of organic material to be dug up in the Fall. I just dug up a 4x8 bed of corn that had just been picked out yesterday, spread out some cover crop seed and we were blessed with a gentle steady rain over night which should allow great germination. I also stack all my tomato cages, laying on their side, between pieces of rebar on each end to keep them from rolling. Clean up all my garden tools, sharpen those that need it, and start planning for next year.
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Post by september on Aug 22, 2018 8:25:04 GMT -5
Well, ideally the garden would be cleaned up in the fall. However, since I have a short season, I leave my crops in the garden as long as possible for any production, as well as for things like beans to fully dry for seed. In my location, mother nature may step in with an early snowfall before the ground freezes, and that snow may even stay on the ground all winter. I live in the middle of woods, so I have an unlimited supply of leaves to shred and cover the cleaned beds with, but some years the snow will cover the leaves before I get around to raking and shredding them. I really hate having to do all the garden chores in the spring, but I have accepted that I just can't move as fast as I used to, and my gardens will never be perfect, so I'm happy with what ever I get with the amount of time I put in.
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Post by octave1 on Aug 22, 2018 9:05:00 GMT -5
I do a little of both. Some parts of the garden get cleaned up, mostly so I can plant a cover crop. Some other parts are left alone. I do not till, so I do not really have a reason to clear up any area. i used to clean up methodically, but I cannot see how this is beneficial for the soil. Perhaps leaving debris to decompose in situ in a better option. So this year I am thinking that I will not touch anything.
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Post by spike on Aug 22, 2018 10:09:45 GMT -5
I remove old plants and till the garden over.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Aug 22, 2018 10:30:23 GMT -5
I pull things up gradually, and I throw them all out with "lawn trash", since I don't want to "save" any of those diseases, and much of that which is left is woody, which takes a long time to compost. The peppers and the butternuts are the last ones to go, besides the fall crop, that is.
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stone
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Post by stone on Aug 24, 2018 7:34:06 GMT -5
They call pulling out the plants and tossing them to the curb... Strip mining the garden.
When God gardens, there's a nice layer of mulch dropped over everything.... Good enough for God, good enough for me.
The weeds are left standing to feed the birds... They love chenopodium seed...I've been pulling down corn stalks to make room for the zinnias, and the corn stalks are just left on top of the garden soil to provide a mulch cover... I've been pulling out some bean tepees, but again, only to make enough room for the new plants...
Soon enough, I will be planting winter crops, kale rutabagas, carrots, turnips, and whatever else.... Any garden space not needed... Gets left be for the songbirds.... And... The dropped tomatoes? Starter plants for next summer's garden.
The more plants I can convince to self-sow, the happier I'm going to be.
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Post by Gianna on Aug 24, 2018 19:59:55 GMT -5
Some years I just keep planting. Some beds are allowed to rest, but often just let alone. I'd like to get 'quiet' beds mulched for the rainy season, but that doesn't always happen.
I like the idea of cover crops, but grasses that come up after the first rains often fill that roll. This year I want to use lots of cauliflower plants as cover crops. I planted broccoli for that role last year. And I want to plant some fava beans.
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Post by horsea on Aug 26, 2018 11:05:22 GMT -5
Interesting reading from all of you, but this year I am trying something different:
*Except for the root vegetables (obviously)I am leaving all plant roots in.
*Leaves will be stripped from the stalks & left on top of the soil, chopped or torn up only if necessary. Heavy, thick, tough coarse plant parts (stalks) above the soil will be removed and put in a pile. When dried out, they'll be chopped up coarsely with the lawn mower and break down faster.
I love this type of work, which I've already started for those plants that are finished; it is so peaceful and satisfying. Wish I had done things this way over the years instead of yanking everything out and inserting new organic matter. I'll let the worms do the inserting in the spring.
Those roots left in the ground will break down faster than anything in a compost pile, as I have noticed in past years when I didn't get around to cleaning certain portions of the garden. The point is to not disturb the soil. Mother nature doesn't do it and things seem to be growing quite well for her.
Then mulch a bit with leaf mold whch I've scraped from under the spruce trees & re-hydrated. No, I don't take all of it, just a bit. Then a final covering of crushed dried leaves and-or lawn clippings.
*Remove the large tomato cages (home-made).
Some aspects of "cleanup" we are told to do has served only to ruin soil structure, which is a problem when you have sandy soil, as we do. I'm not criticizing anyone here for wanting or needing to do things differently.
Disease is not caused by leaving some portion of your dead plants on top of the soil or even in the soil - it is largely caused by disturbance of the soil/poor mineral status/insufficient watering during droughts (where even mulching doens't help). The forests near where I live are not disease-ridden, neither are the meadows. Also true of the wild areas of our large property.
We have high water table, necessitating raised beds. A unique situation which obviously doesn't apply to everyone here.
This has been a long reply and I hope it is readable. Thank you.
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Post by brownrexx on Aug 26, 2018 11:17:10 GMT -5
Disease is not caused by leaving some portion of your dead plants on top of the soil or even in the soil - it is largely caused by disturbance of the soil/poor mineral status/insufficient watering during droughts (where even mulching doens't help). The forests near where I live are not disease-ridden, neither are the meadows. Also true of the wild areas of our large property. I agree with everything that you said except for this statement. Tomatoes and peppers are not native plants so you can not compare them to forest or meadow plants which are native plants. Most tomato disease is caused fungal spores which are borne on the leaves and dropped into the soil where some of them overwinter and some die in the winter in the colder climates like mine. This is why many of us choose to remove all tomato plant vegetation from the garden at the end of the year. I also rotate my tomato plant location every 2-3 years. Early Blight is one tomato disease that can overwinter here and it gets onto the lower leaves of the tomato plants when soil is splashed up onto them. It lives in the soil and is unrelated to soil disturbance, watering or nutrition. Asparagus fronds would be another example of something that I remove from the garden for the health of next year's crop. It is not because of a fungal disease but because asparagus beetles lay their eggs in the berries and then they hatch next year so I remove the dead fronds from the garden to get rid of these eggs.
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Post by horsea on Aug 26, 2018 11:45:32 GMT -5
I don't know; maybe you are correct. But here, the winters are brutal and they seem to kill everything. Everything but the flea beetles, for which I don't have a solution. No wonder pesticides are so popular. So, I just stopped growing those things that the flea beetles glom onto. I did cleanup religiously for years and after 10 years of gardening, flea beetles just decided to show up. There are mustard & canola fields around here so they found my garden.
As to toms & peppers not being "native", well, I don't know. They did originate in the New World though of course have undergone much breeding. They are nightshades and I do have wild nightshade popping up at the edge of my garden.
Tks for reading my long comments, Brownrexx.
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Post by octave1 on Aug 26, 2018 11:52:08 GMT -5
Plant disease can be a combination of factors, but I believe that weather plays an important role. In 2012 we had the driest, hottest summer on record, and my tomatoes did not show any sign of disease (mostly Septoria) well into September. A few years ago we had frequent rainfalls all summer long, and my zucchini plants died in October, with the first frost. I do not believe that exposing plants to soil born disease is questionable, in fact I think that healthy plants will be able to fend off most diseases if the weather agrees with their requirements.
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Post by paulf on Aug 26, 2018 12:02:26 GMT -5
Tomato and pepper and potato plants and roots all get completely removed from the garden area since the diseases that congregate on them will remain active for years. That is one reason rotation is suggested by every horticulturalist I ever heard about. In my small garden rotation is impossible, so sanitation is essential. Fungal, bacterial and viral pests remain in the soil over winter here unaffected by winter temperatures. Maybe not cold enough, but please no more cold weather for me. Diseases also are able to overwinter on cages necessitating the bleach treatment.
I do till in all sorts of organics other than the disease prone tomato and related plants. All other vegetation either gets composted or removed so that bugs don't have a hiding place for the winter. All the organics decompose over the winter. My main culprits are soil borne diseases so a mulching program helps where rotation is impractical.
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Post by brownrexx on Aug 26, 2018 12:31:28 GMT -5
I believe that weather plays an important role. I agree with this. Fungal and bacterial disease, like plants, require certain conditions to thrive. Hot and dry is very unattractive for fungal spores but when the weather becomes cool at night here and dew remains on the leaves, some spores like Late Blight are activated. This is why Late Blight usually only arrives in late August around here. Is is known as a water mold because it needs water on the leaves to live. I just saw a report in a Penn State plant disease newsletter that Late Blight was just found in the county next to mine. The spores travel on the wind so it probably won't be long until I get it too but it does not overwinter here. Septoria is also a fungal disease but it thrives on warm and moist not cool and moist like Late Blight so weather conditions definitely contribute to which diseases will thrive.
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Post by paulf on Aug 26, 2018 13:12:13 GMT -5
Here on the edge of the Great Plains, the blights come at opposite times of their names. Late blight usually happens in late spring if at all. Early blight hits in August or September, begins at the bottom of the plant and works it's way up. The final disease of the year.
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Post by Gianna on Sept 14, 2018 1:42:28 GMT -5
Those roots left in the ground will break down faster than anything in a compost pile, as I have noticed in past years when I didn't get around to cleaning certain portions of the garden. The point is to not disturb the soil. Mother nature doesn't do it and things seem to be growing quite well for her. I've been doing this the past couple years. My version of no-till, and have been having great results. Last year I planted a lot of broccoli to over-winter in some areas (no frost here) and when I wanted the beds for something else, just cut off the broccoli at their bases and planted in new stuff without tilling. Then the broccoli decided to re-grow. And some of them gave me better heads than the first growing. And the 'new stuff' (some chili plants) did great too. I have been throwing some of the coarser garden refuse away, but the softer stuff I like to just spread over the beds and let it compost away. I'll also spread a lot of ground city mulch (free) as well. Helps with water retention too. After a slow start, I've been having so much fun in the garden this year. Less work (well, perhaps 'different' work), and better results. I love no-till.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2018 13:10:03 GMT -5
Since our winters are cold, but much more arm than many, things go in and out. Tomorrow I will be putting in strawberry plants for next year though they may end up moved again, LOL!!
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