Putting the beds to bed

I pledged that I would do a better job tidying up all of the raised and in-ground beds before winter this year. In prior years (and especially last year) I started too late and ran out of steam, so this year I am setting and keeping a steady pace so I don’t burn out.

So far I have completed one of the five in-ground beds, the one that was the previous potato patch. After pulling the potatoes and tilling (during which Steve found many more potatoes!), I added a layer of our compost and moved several perennials to their new home. So far most of them are still in transplant shock, pretty angry about the move. I have a bunch of bulbs arriving next week and more in early October, and this is where they will go. Once the bulbs are in, I will rake the straw back over as winter mulch, and then we can add more perennials next spring.

Five of the eight raised beds are also good to go. The first is our strawberry bed, which is still producing delicious strawberries! I pulled most of the rampant morning glories from the plants and will pull the remaining climbers after the first frost. This bed doesn’t really need anything else for winter - maybe a little more mulch if I buy some more.

The other beds held the beets, beans, onions, and bachelor button flowers. Each bed was cleared and dug deeply. Then I added a layer of our compost and mixed it in a bit. Then I planted a cover crop, mostly daikon radish. I left the irrigation in place so that it can help the cover crops get started on their growth, until (hopefully) we get some actual rain.

The bachelor button bed before it was cleared out. These flowers were really fun, though I’m not sure I will have a place for them next year.

The cleaned-up/composted-up bachelor button bed, along with one of the bean beds.

As beds are cleared, the landscape fabric is pulled, rinsed, dried, and folded away for future use.

You have to really zoom in to see the radish seeds - they are round and pink, a pretty large seed. But they still blend in!

Even though the irrigation is still running, until the seeds germinate I give them lots of water.

Here is the beet bed that has been cover-cropped with daikon radish earlier this week. The idea with the radish cover crop technique is that you let the plants grow, and then they will die once frost hits. The dead plants stay in place and act as a mulch over the winter. The plants also help keep the soil broken up as their taproots break up the soil and help store nutrients like nitrogen. After the snow melts, we just turn over/dig in the dead plant matter that will be on top.

This front bed is planted in winter wheat as its cover crop, which acts a little differently. Winter wheat is formulated to survive the winter snow and cold, so these little plants wont die once the frosts hit. They will wake back up (green) in the spring and continue growing. In mid-April I will need to clip these plants low and then cover the bed with a solid sheet of black plastic. Covering the bed will cause the plants to die and start breaking down over the next few weeks. Then it’s the same process - mix the dead plants in, and it’s ready for new plantings. Same benefits also, helping to scavange that nitrogen for next year’s crops.

The wheat seedlings grow quickly - this is after maybe 3 days.

The whole cover crop thing is a big experiment this year, but I am excited about giving it a shot. We know we do not have world-class soil around here, so anything we can do to continuously improve the quality of our dirt can’t hurt. Plus I like the process, and it has helped ensure I stay on top of bed clean-up this year. The other 4 in-ground beds will be covered in winter wheat and tilled in come spring.