After the growing season

[doc623]

What do you do with your garden patch after the growing season?
1. Do you till?
2. Do you plow and if so do you leave the furrows open?
3. Do you take the left overs and burn them in a pile and add the ash to the soil?
4. Do you plant a cover crop; if so what?
5. Nothing until the next growing season?
6. Do you fertilize/minerals?
 

[jvs]

First I do a soil test every year in the Fall.
 
Then I usually till a little lime and 10-10-10 under.
 
No Cover crop needed so far.
 
In spring, I will layout the garden, till leaf mulch under, plant bunching and bulb onions (possibly Spinach),  cover the rest with weed cloth and raise the fence.
 
By then, it's time to pick Rhubarb and buy  plants.
 
I never use the previous years plants for anything becaue of possible disease and insect carryover.  Burned or not.

[reliquary]

I'm just a hobby gardener now, with maybe 1500 sq ft total that I manage with  5-hp tiller and hand tools. In the past I've had as much as 1/3 acre that required a small tractor and larger tiller.  With the larger spot, I burned the cover after a killing frost, cut it in, planted annual rye as a manure crop, and disked that under in the spring.  I scrounged all forms of manure, rotted sawdust, etc, and cut that in as well.
 
With the smaller plot, I compost scraps and all plant debris from the garden and till that in, in the fall.  Weeds are kept down during growing season with leaves and newspapers, which are tilled in, in the fall.  This year, as a tip from Mother Earth (Oct/Nov 2011), I'm going to plant Durch White clover as a ground cover and let it go as a living mulch in the spring.  I scatter a few mustard and turnip seeds at intervals over the old growing area and keep some around most of the year.
 
I'm not totally organic, I will Roundup pesky weeds when I'm too lazy to run the hoe, but so far they haven't been much of a problem.

[chefjeff]

I always plant a cover crop.Wheat,austrian winter peas,clover,and brassicas this year. They all attract wildlife,hold and enrich the soil,and give me something green to look at.

[longwinters]

I put lime and triple 19 on.  Then till and plant winter rye.  It comes up nice and green and then in the spring I till that under and I'm good to go.
 
Long

[bilmac]

I would sure like to plant a cover crop to keep the wind from blowing my dirt around, but my season is real short here. Next year I think I will plant field peas whenever I remove an early maturing crop. I have one garden that is in permanent mulch. I will put all the leaves I pick up with my lawnmower on it but then I also have to put flakes of baled hay on top of them to keep them from blowing away.

[Cornbelt]

Our zone is a lot more temperate than where you live, but sometimes farmers will sow a sparse seeding of oats with their clover if in the fall as a nurse crop. The oats come up, get frost bit and die off, giving the clover some protective mulch.

[keith44]

First I cut down all standing plants (weeds included) and leave them where they fall.  After a couple weeks I gather up all the fallen limbs from the previous winter and any tree trimmings and pile them in the garden area and burn them.  When things cool off I start piling on leaves and grass clippings until there is a two to three feet thick layer over the entire garden.  This winters over as is until March, or april at the latest.  I turn the entire garden by shovel.  Then run the tiller a few days later to mix everything in really well.  The garden area is 45 x 65 and it takes two full weekends to turn it all.  I have two small raised beds that get the same treatment also.  I usually do the raised beds first.

[LunaticFringeInc]

I make a trip over to one of my dieghbors down the road and get several pick up bed loads of Horse Manure and Soiled Bedding Straw (usually has a good sized pile that hes all too willing to let someone remove it for him so he doesnt have to) and pile it on top of my raised beds.  Come spring I will put the tiller attachment on my heavy duty weed eater and till it under and mix it with the underly soil.

[Cheesehead]

I put my lawn mower on high blade, and cut/mulch everything left standing, such as weeds, tomato, lettuce, beans, peas and spinach. Following with a 5 horse front tine tiller and roll it all under. It has a nice cleaned up smooth appearance.
 
Cheese

[bilmac]

I have lived in Wyo. Ariz. Alaska Ore. Nebr. and back to Wyo. I have gardened in every one of these places, and several different locations in Wyo. In almost every place, the soil was in bad condition when I moved in.

 My soils ranged from pure sand to heavy sticky clay to calechie which is clay mixed with rocks. I almost always had to make my soil before my gardens were very productive. I did it by adding organic material. Lawn clippings were my most commonly used material, but almost everything organic went on my gardens. I've never composted, just threw stuff on top as it became available, and tilled it in in the fall and/or spring. My usual stay in one place is around 5 to 8 years, and by the time I left, I had as good a garden as could be expected given the limitations of climate.

[Bugflipper]

My mower has a plug you put in the discharge and mulching blades. I mulch up everything after it's done. Then mow all the leaves in the yard to the garden and mulch them up. The manure from the animals is spread out over it. Then I till it all up. Collards and turnips are sewn as a manure crop as well as for the deer and bunnies. In spring I mulch up the greens, till them under then add all the previous year's compost pile along with ground up bone from processing. It's tilled in several times then planted again.