Filed under: September 2015 | Tags: cover crops, gardening, Oats, rye, Spelt, wheat
Garden beds ready for winter
September 17, 2015
It has been a hectic week so far. The garden beds have been all cleaned off, worked up and planted to a cover crop. This year I chose oats. The oats will grow well until about Thanksgiving time. They will then die back and provide a winter mulch layer for the otherwise exposed soil. When spring gets here, the oat mulch is easily worked into the beds at planting time.
I have used rye, wheat and spelt for winter cover. These plants grow much of the winter and early spring. They provide plenty of organic matter to till in the spring. I chose oats this year because the beds are full of composted material already and I am hoping for an early spring warm up in the raised beds. It will be nice to get off to an early gardening start.
My favorite summer cover crop for garden and field is buckwheat. This plant provides much weed suppression. It is hollow stemmed and incorporates easily at plow down time. It is also a great soil miner. It makes many micro nutrients available for the following crop. It mines the soil, then gives it up when dead and rotting in the soil. The bees and other pollinators love the flowering blossoms of buckwheat making this plant a win-win for everyone involved 😮
5 Comments so far
Leave a comment
RicelandMeadows 
Thanks for the information Ralph!
Comment by Jacklyn September 18, 2015 @ 11:31 amYou are very welcome!
Comment by ricelandmeadows September 19, 2015 @ 6:10 amStop in anytime and I will discuss gardening with you.
Thanks for the post ideas. I see your gardens continue to look good. You are a hard worker.
Comment by ricelandmeadows September 25, 2015 @ 9:43 pmGreat reads…just stumbled upon you this evening. I live in the same area and would love to be able to pick your brain for information 🙂
Comment by Penny September 19, 2015 @ 7:11 pmPenny, thanks for the nice words. I hope you will follow along, as for picking my brain…you are welcome to do so anytime!
Comment by ricelandmeadows September 20, 2015 @ 6:26 am