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oldokie

winter

oldokie
10 years ago

do you leave your garden to itself in winter.
My big garden I am getting ready to plow under and let the freezes and weather do it job with corn stalks that i brushhoged
My smaller one that had tomatoes, okra, peppers and squash I am cleaning off and rough it up so the mulch will break down better.
Do you guys have any other suggestions.
I mulch my small garden (60x35) last year but the ground stayed cool longer caused plants not to grow as quickly.

Comments (5)

  • slowpoke_gardener
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I think there are good and bad in everything I have tried. If I leave it mulched it takes the ground longer to warn. If I just leave it bare I get a lot of grass and weeds to deal with. If I plant a cover crop I have wet ground to deal with in the spring. The type of winter weather I have makes all the difference in the world. This year I am leaving some ground bare and plan on tilling it often enough to control the grass and weeds. Other areas I am leaving mulch on and plan on planting later. I would like to go to a no till garden, but that sure seems to cause slow growth in the spring.

  • oldokie
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I was wanting to use no till with mulch but as you I do not think the ground will warm fast enough had trouble last year with tomatoes and peppers

  • helenh
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I live in MO but less than 10 miles from OK. We had snow in May. I don't think last year was typical if there is such a thing as typical.

  • mulberryknob
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    We used to plant a winter covercrop--winter wheat--but quit because the deer got too accustomed to finding a buffet in our garden. After we tilled the wheat, they returned to munch on spinach, lettuce, greenbeans. Now we just leave it bare and empty, with chicken litter spread on part of it, until DH gets around to tilling it, usually in early February, weather permitting.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    My preference is to rototill all the old mulch and compost that is on top of the soil into the beds in the fall and then to cover all the beds and pathways with hay and chopped/shredded leaves. I usually don't get it done as early as I'd like, but if I don't do it, I'll have knee-high cool-season weeds in the garden by February, and they'll be waist high by mid-March. I'd rather rake back mulch prior to planting than have to pull up a lot of winter weeds. If you rake back your mulch to the edge of each planting row or planting bed about a week before you want to plant, the sunshine can warm up the newly-exposed soil. When I rake back mulch to the edges of beds to warm up the soil just prior to planting time, my garden looks like it has huge mole runs running across it. I rake the mulch back down around the plants as soon as the newly sprouted (or newly-transplanted) plants are tall enough that the mulch doesn't bury them and smother them.

    Last year was not at all a typical spring, as I am sure you remember well, and the ground was very slow to warm up since we had freezing weather, or almost-freezing weather, far later in the year than we normally do.

    You also still could do no-till gardening, and just lay a large sheet of either clear or black plastic over the entire garden 2 or 3 weeks before planting time. Obviously you'd have to use bricks, boards, large rocks or something else to keep your plastic from sailing away on the wind. The sunlight/heat absorbed by the plastic will help warm up the soil beneath it. The disadvantage to using the plastic is that as the soil warms up, some dormant weed seeds will sprout underneath the plastic. For that reason, I use black instead of clear plastic since it allows less light penetration, but some people prefer to use clear plastic.

    With the exception of 2011 when the weather warmed up in February, allowing me to put the tomato plants in the ground in early March, we have had recurring bouts of colder-than-normal temperatures in spring ever since 2007 that have persistently lasted until the first week of May. On paper, my average last frost date is March 28th or 29th depending on who you believe. In reality, though, we have had a killing frost or killing freeze in the first week of May ever since 2006 or 2007. I just plant as on-time as possible, and use floating row cover to protect the plants from the recurring freezing weather and cold nights. Last year, the cold weather was so persistent that my corn was knee high by the time we had our last freezing night. If we had had one more week with a cold, freezing night, I would have lost the corn because it would have gotten too tall to cover. As it was, I barely was able to cover it up on the last cold night that we did have.

    In our county (and I think this likely is true in many other parts of OK) the trend in recent years has been to have warmer weather overall in winter but then to have a handful of freezing nights persist very deeply in spring. In our county, the weather at planting time was fairly normal until about 2005 or 2006 but has been very different ever since. Since I think this may be "the new normal", I have invested money in hoops and in floating row cover so I can just go ahead and plant when I should instead of having to wait for the cold weather to end. Floating row cover also helps the ground to heat up by trapping warm air beneath the row cover. I've only used floating row cover since around 2005 or 2006 and now I wonder how I ever grew anything without it.

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