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Post by brownrexx on Oct 22, 2022 17:43:01 GMT -5
How do you deal with your garden at the end of the season?
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Post by paulf on Oct 22, 2022 18:57:10 GMT -5
Remove all dead foliage, pull any weeds that have grown up in the mulch and then rototill the garden in the fall to till under the mulch that consists of newspaper and weedless straw so it will contribute to the organic content of the soil. Because of soil tests by a professional lab I always need to add elemental sulphur in the fall. Nitrogen gets added in the spring as needed. Then wait for spring. No more tilling but in the spring everything gets raked level.
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Post by mgulfcoastguy on Oct 22, 2022 18:58:48 GMT -5
Remove tomato cages and stakes, run a lawn more over, rototill flat, cover with hardwood leaves if available.
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Post by spike on Oct 22, 2022 21:34:52 GMT -5
I clean it all up and have it tilled under for the winter. It is possible that I reach down and pat the ground a couple of times and say I will be back in the Spring!
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Post by september on Oct 22, 2022 21:39:38 GMT -5
I try to do some clean up in the fall, but the weather always gets cold too fast for my old slow moving bones, so most of it gets done in the spring. Ideally, I would cover the beds with shredded leaves that get tilled in in the spring, but often early snowfall wets them down too fast. And I have this compulsion to hand weed my raised beds before I till. I've given up striving for a perfect garden, I do what I can and accept what I get.
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Post by octave1 on Oct 22, 2022 22:42:55 GMT -5
Vegetable garden: take down all the plants, chop them and make huge compost pile for the following season. Cover beds with previously made compost, shredded leaves and/or grass clippings. Never till. Flower garden: walk away and wait until Spring to see if annuals are reseeding and coming back.
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Post by rdback on Oct 23, 2022 9:03:41 GMT -5
Every Fall I plan to clean up and put it to bed. Every Spring I have to do all the things I didn't get done the previous Fall.
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Post by brownrexx on Oct 23, 2022 10:31:09 GMT -5
When we tilled yesterday I thought that the soil looked so pretty and it smelled nice too. I thought that I was tired of the garden but seeing that loose, crumbly, dark soil made me start thinking about where I would plant things next year.
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Post by september on Oct 23, 2022 11:02:14 GMT -5
For years I didn't need to till in my raised beds, just used a garden fork to turn over the soil. But in the 45 years we have lived here, the spruce trees we planted 20-30 ft from the garden, have grown tall and now keep sending a network of roots into the edges of the beds. Trying to cut and pull by hand is way too labor intensive. My Mantis does a good job on most of them. When I quit raising horses and lost access to old manure and stall bedding, I switched over to raised beds. I had a large load of black dirt brought in to mix with the existing clay soil to fill the beds. But there wasn't enough for all the beds, so they still have a lot of clay in them. If we happen to get a lot of cold rain in the fall, the beds stay too wet to til anyway.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Oct 23, 2022 12:26:31 GMT -5
I need a poll with a third option: clean up and plant the winter garden. My garden never "sleeps."
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Post by octave1 on Oct 23, 2022 12:32:41 GMT -5
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Post by brownrexx on Oct 23, 2022 15:04:23 GMT -5
What an interesting idea octave1, although it's too late to do that this year since we tilled and mulched yesterday but it's definitely food for thought for another time. I think that they do this around here in some large perennial gardens. They call them Rain Gardens and I think that it's the same thing. I never heard of doing it for a vegetable garden though so what an interesting idea. I had some harvest from everything I planted this year but my yield was a lot less than normal. When we talked to the farmer where we bought the straw he said that it had been a terrible year and that his yield had dropped by 35%. We have had a lot of rain since then and I think that we are back to normal but the summer was way too hot and way too dry for decent gardening or farming. I think that one thing that really benefits my garden is all of the organic matter that we add. Average for my area is 4% but I have between 8-12% and this helps to hold the moisture. I also credit my straw mulch with helping conserve water.
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Post by paulf on Oct 23, 2022 15:10:52 GMT -5
I read through this (not sure what to call it) and discovered the entire paper was filled with jingoisms, buzz words, theories and impractabilities. Sounded like a hippy guide to how to make a commune self-sustaining...for about a year until the real money ran out.
That may be a little harsh but to put this idea into practibility would require a lot of effort without much chance of return. But then, my style of gardening is not for sustainability or self sustenance. If I were looking for my gardens to be our solitary source of food I would certainly have a different approach than I do.
I enjoy reading about alternatives and thankfully my life does not depend on the practices I use. Thanks for the information.
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