Remove all mulch and let the weeds take over till next spring? Or do you cover your area with something? If so, what?

Do you throw all your stuff like tomatoe, pepper and cucumber vines and such into the compost pile? Or into the trash?

After this drought, the only thing I have left is pumpkins. They're still hanging on. My cukes gave out, the bugs got the peppers and my tomatoes just stopped. But I had a great harvest for my 2nd year garden!

What I do is remove any remaining veggies that are still eatable and then run my mulching mower over the garden area. I grind up the plant stocks and vines along with the hay mulch we had down. I leave the ground up old mulch and shredded plant remains there on the garden through the winter. In the spring I will either turn it under and plant or pull it aside and plant depending on how well it did through the winter.

Then when the new plants are ready for it I will put down more hay munch for that year.

I read somewhere that over 95% of the nutrients and minerals that plants take from the soil that they need to grow are in the plant itself and not the eatable veggies or fruit. So by leaving it right there in the garden I am returning all that good stuff to the soil where it came from.

I compost all my residue plant material. If I had really diseased plants, I would not include them, but I've thrown in pea plants and squash leaves with powdery mildew (burying them deep in the pile and covering it) and have not had a problem with it spreading.

I'm looking for a chipper/shredder to grind up everything for the compost pile, but for now most of it goes in as is. Everything but the tree branches (and a coconut shell which is still in there) breaks down over time.

Hopeitgrows!

I am so happy to hear from you! Yes I read your reply about my dad. Thanks. Sure miss you on here!

Glad you got a good harvest before everything dried up. Same thing happened here. No rain, and well, yep, I've ripped up stuff and mowed it and am composting anything not diseased.

Since you are in the community garden (right?), I agree with Major , just mow the stuff up and leave it lay till spring and dig it in.

Or you could clean up everything and then throw straw down for the winter, if you had a lot of diseased plants. A blight got my Black Krim tomatoes, so I pulled and pitched those nasty buggers!

Can't remember if you compost in a wire circle on site or not. But that could be another option. Set it in the middle of your bed and throw all your mowed up debri in that, to compost till spring, then spreaad it out and dig it in.

I'm thinking here. HaHa

Will you get to start coming back here much when school is back in session and the kid's are busy? Hope so!

Okay, I'm running my yap. Your turn! I talk enough. Give me a full update on yourself and family! When time permits!


What was the absolute favorite thing you grew this year?

lisaann

I'll compost the residue, plant cover crops, I'm trying a wheat, rye, vetch, fava mix from Bountiful Gardens this Fall, and cut the field grass (2 kinds here, one about 2' tall and the other about 3' tall)to cover whatever is left (it would be the equivilent of straw if you don't have wild grass.

hmmmmmm.......

My mulch I till in, but I never leave crop residue....especially vine crops ( it's where the vine bore's and squash beetles lay eggs and over-winter, even in the coldest climates ). But that's just me....

I guess I should clarify my answer a bit. I will remove and discard any diseased plants if I have any. But believe me, my mulching mower doesn’t leave anything in big enough pieces for bugs or their eggs to have a place to hide. The crops are ground up so small I have trouble finding anything but course green dust.

We also have several weeks of below zero weather in the winter too which helps keep lots of the bugs at bay. There’s no slugs or snails here either. In fact it always amazes me that the praying mantis are in such great numbers around this part of the country naturally.

I throw out all old plants. They go into the big green can, which the city then makes into mulch. I guess their methods and huge heaps are safer then our home methods.

As soon as I get some finished compost, it will go on top of the straw mulch, and then the "winter" vegetables will be planted in October. It should be cooler by then, and who knows, it may even rain some day.

If it looks diseased, it goes in the swamp.

Everything else pretty much gets turned over with a shovel in place, or thrown in the walkways and run over with the mower.

I don't have a vine borer problem.

I do have squash bugs, but they'll live in the woods anyway. I don't know if my grandparents ever grew squash here, so it could very well be the first time I grew it was the first time ever squash grew here...and the Squash Bugs found my garden thank you very much. I honestly don't remember those nasty sons of b@!@#$! when I was a little kid or anyone talking about them...

I may try a cover crop of rye on my squash/corn bed this year -- which would let me concentrate my leaf clippings on some of my other beds.

I like seeing what other gardeners do...our garden is a "weedless" one, we didn't turn the soil, just laid down newspaper and covered the beds with compost and the paths with mulch. We are removing plant material and throwing it on the compost piles...but would like to plant a cover crop that could be cut down or would die from the frost...any advice would be appreciated. We plan to top-dress the beds with an inch of compost, but may have to cover them with weed cloth or black plastic in the spring before they are fully planted. The idea is to never compact the soil in the beds or disturb it by digging (potatoes excepted). We are so impressed with how productive and weed free this garden is.
In the past, when I lived on Long Island, I used a Troy Bilt tiller and even double dug the beds for leeks and such. I'm not sure if I am smarter now or just lazier, but this weedless thing really works!

I have a raised bed for my veggies. . .this is only my second year with them, so I'm still experimenting, but I think I'll probably use my clippers to chop everything into small pieces (at the end of the season!) and add some leaves, sort of build a compost pile right in the raised bed, again, like someone else said, to give back to the soil. With my flowers I tend to leave them standing to go to seed until Feb. or so, for the birds to munch on. It was very gratifying last winter to see the birds eating the seeds!!

I do whatever I have time for. We don't have enough moisture this time of year (usually anyway) to plant a cover crop. I could put in wheat if DH would ever bring any seed home. You'd think being the seed guy at the elevator he could find me a stay handful!

If time and allergies permit I put all the dead plant material in the compost. If not, I just dig it in in the spring. I've been getting lucky the last couple years and getting shredded cottonwood leaves which I've heaped on a couple beds.

Many people, wrongly, will clean their gardens and throw away all the plant residue and all of the nutrients those plants removed from their soil in the fall because fo rmany years garden writters have been telling people, wrongly, that thye must do that to keep insect pests and plant diseases from overwintering in the garden.
But if you remove all of that plant debris, and the nutrients those plants removed form your soil, you also remove any place for beneficials to overwinter which means the pests probably would have a better chance at your plants next year. There is a large body of research that shows that if diseased plants are put back into a good, healthy soil the bacteria in that soil can and will develop immunities to those diseases to pass on to the plants growing in that soil.
So if you are a person that must have bare soil (Ma Nature does not like that) compost your garden residue on site, do not ever allow any nutrients from your soil to leave your premises. But the best thing you can do to your gardens soil is to put the plants that grew there right back into the soil they grew in so the nutrients those plants took out of the soil go back.

Thank you for all the information, however different. It's still all very educational for me.

Lisa, My compost is just a pile of stuff, no barrier(and not much of a pile at that). It is in the community area. Yes, I;ll be back more often now that the boys are in school. Insert a Hallelujah here! Glad to hear from you. Smiled when I read the post about your garlic surprise and happy you are surrounded my folks who care. You really like your garlic don't you? What do you do with all that garlic?

The absolute best thing I planted this year was the Dr. Carolyn yellow cherry tomatoes. Yum, Yum, Yummay!!!! I discovered them at the Farmer's market last summer. The seller had them out for people to try. Well, one bite and I was hooked. So I went online, ordered seeds and tended to them very carefully. They produces a bumper crop! I also tried Red German or German Red, stupice and mortgage lifters. None of them really compared, in my opinion, to the little Dr. Carolyn's. Thanks for asking. Was yours the garlic??

For the first time I'm considering either my first fall crop of greens (no brussel sprouts!) or a cover crop. But we're still in a drought. They might post mandatory water restrictions any day. Not sure how this will affect my garden as I have a drip system.

Matt Choo, if you don't mind my asking, whereabouts in Charlotte are you? Im in SW near Carowinds.

Howdy Neighbor!

I'm in Myers Park, on Providence Rd. near the infamous Queens & Queens/Providence & Providence intersection.

I think you are fine with your drip system – the water restrictions are for lawn sprinkler system (automatic and non-). Did you get any rain over the last few days? We got a good soaking, for which I'm very thankful!