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Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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Posted by nygardener z6 New York (My Page) on Sun, Nov 1, 09 at 11:41
| I have lots of veggies — celery, kale, chard, lettuce — that are fairly hardy and that I'd like to continue to enjoy fresh as long as I can. On the other hand, I'd like to clean out all my beds and prepare them for winter (with or without a cover crop). If I wait too long, the ground will start to freeze or stay wet, and bed preparation will be a lot more of a hassle, if I can do it at all.
How do you keep stuff in the ground for fall eating, and still get your garden beds ready for winter?
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Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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The way I do it is to have those late crops in an area that doesn't need winterized. Perhaps that means having them planted together.
I have already done earlier any additions that I want to stir in. I still have some leaves to fine mulch and add on top. Some I stir in and some I don't. |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| That's easy, build new ones! =)You can never have too many! |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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The ones you've just listed will last a long time, maybe all winter. What you can do is just cultivate around/between those plants, add compost, burry leaves, fertilize, add lime(if neededed),plant cover crops(maybe too late)...
Then mulch them with fall leave and sprinkle some soil on them.
I have some fall/winter crops and some summer crops (eggplants, peppers, tomatoes) that are still going. I will wait till the first frost and then pull them out and get on with winterizing. My winterizing will consist of adding some lime, turning over (w/shovel), burrying/mixing some fall leaves. Thats some food and work for the earthworms.
I have also piles of composts that I mix in a lot of fall leaves. I will continue adding wood ash all winter, as I burn lots of wood in the fireplace. Wood ash can be a substitute for lime and provide potasium, and amend the soil as well.
Then I will enjoy the warmth by the fireplace, burning the wood that I cut and split. Today I will have some spliting to do. THATS SOME WINTERIZING MYSELF(Grin) |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| This is a little off topic ... but I thought you were only suppose to add very small amounts of wood ash to compost or beds? Adding ash all winter sounds like much mor than what I read seemed to insuinuate ... then again, Im a new to a lot of this stuff, and theres always more than one way to skin a cat... |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| I was considering this very same problem as I was standing next to a wheelbarrow full of compost while staring at one bed of rutabagas and one full of winter leeks. I think what I'll do is mulch with compost next year those beds that I can't work compost into this year. |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| Good question. I have been thinking about this for a while. Like you said now is the time. Especially for me. We have had nothing but rain all month. We have 2 weeks possible of no rain so it might be now or never. I still have greens and such growing, not real fast with no sun and tons of rain. But I hate to till in something that is still growing albeit not very quickly. My main problem is this is a new house and the beds need work. What to do. I know what I need to do, but what do I want to do. |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| ozzz, If your garden soil Ph is hi, say, around 6.8 - 7.1,
then you do not need to add lots of wood ash. But my soil ph is around 6.0 to 6.4. So the wood ash coming from my fireplace is not going to harm. Besides, I keep adding lots of rotted leaves, broken pine needles and fall leaves that are all acidic. The foundation of soil here is red clay wich I believ is more on the acid side. The thing is that changing acidity(increasing ph) cannot happen right away like the effect of fertilizers. The change will take place gradually over many months and years. As I said, adding lots of organic matter tend to reduce PH. Brnging down PH, on the other hand, is much easier and quicker. Another thing is that you don't get too much ash from firewood. Maybe in one month you can accumulate about one bucketful(when wetted and compacted).
cyrus |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| nygardener, I feel your frustration. It's the same every year: some things still hanging on, and other things seemingly still gaining strength, and meanwhile you'd like to start prepping things for next year. For example, I just pulled out five huge broccoli plants that looked like they wanted to grow forever, side shoots popping out all over the place. But this is the time when the leaves are raining down and the temperatures are still moderate, making this the best time to do the prep work, so I yanked them out, threw them in the hole I dug, and filled in the rest with leaves. I see it as a sacrifice that will pay off next year. However, I'm still giving my bell peppers the benefit of the doubt. They got a late start and are coming into their own now so I'll give them a little more time, ready to pull them out if the weather turns cold. |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| It seems kind of strange to pull out plants which are still productive, and in fact thrive, in cooler temperatures, just to get the beds ready for planting next year. Isn't the whole point of the garden to get food from it?? I would have thought that the gardening schedule was a servant to the produce (the goal), not the other way around... I have most of my fall crops in two beds, and can work on clearing the other beds for now. I'll do those two beds in the spring, if I'm lucky enough to have plants still producing into winter! Lori |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| It seems to me that mulch is the answer to this question. If you apply a good mulch of well chopped leaves to your fall crops, or, better yet, finished compost, it will protect your crops from cold damage for awhile, keep down winter weeds (which are worse here than in summer), and will rot into the soil through the winter. Come spring, just turn it into the soil. Am I missing something here? |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| vikingkirken and donnabaskets: I guess it all comes down to what extent you take your winter prepping of the garden. When my season is over I dig pits of at least 18 inches deep and then fill those pits in with my spent plants and lots of leaves before back-filling the pits with soil. This requires removal of plants. I can't work around them. Through the winter there is some breaking down of all that organic matter, and in the spring more breaking down. By summer planting time, breakdown is almost complete and the soil is as rich as one can get it, and that's why I do it the way I do. |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| I simply clean up the areas that can be cleaned, and don't touch the areas that still have standing vegetables. I think it's really that simple. The areas that don't get cleaned up in the fall will then get cleaned up in the spring. I realize this kind of flies in the face of the whole notion of "putting the garden to bed" but really, proper vegetable gardening is practically a 12-month cycle, not just a May-October seasonal deal. -Diggity |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| I put cold frames over most of my beds to keep them producing all winter, so I don't really have a "putting the garden to bed" routine. For the uncovered beds, I'll add compost and mulch as I harvest out the carrots, leeks and other overwintering vegetables in them. For the covered beds, I add the compost generated by sheet composting in the paths to them before seeding the next crop. My gardening is a year around endeavour. getting 3-5 crops per year out of the beds. |
RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| I'm with diggity on this. Well ya it's frosted a few times and I have a few square foot cold frames, but I am still harvesting, You can't put to bed what you are using. there is time next spring to clear and replant. I plan on a spinach salad for dinner tomorrow (yum) maybe a Chinese radish or two also. Curt:-)
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RE: Preparing beds vs. fall harvest
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| I think I agree with y'all. I've cleaned up about a third of the beds, which were growing warm-weather plants. The rest are giving me a salad a day and plenty to give away. Those beds can stay as they are until spring. |
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