Organic Gardening Info from Peaceful Valley

I read that almond hulls have a lot of calcium. If that is true, would they make good top dressing for a small vineyard on fairly heave soil?
Thank you,
Val

A lot of our earliest and most vibrant reminders of Spring are bulbs.  But what happens after the flowers have gone and the leaf material has turned brown and wilted?  If they are inter-planted with other perennial plants or late blooming bulbs your beds will look wonderful through summer.  Then Winter hits and we sometimes wonder where the bulbs went and will they make it through our typical winter freezes?  The good news is that most of our favorite bulbs are in the hardy plant category that can over winter underground even where frost penetrates deeply into the soil.  Crocus, Daffodils, Tulips, Lillies and Hyacinths fall into this category.  Bulbs will benefit greatly from a 2-4″ deep mulch of shredded bark or hardwood, leaves or compost.  Mulch prevents the ground from alternately freezing and thawing, which can heave bulbs right out of the ground during winter.  In summer, mulch conserves moisture and keeps the weeds at bay.  Wait until the ground freezes to apply a winter mulch to fall planted bulbs.  Check your local Master Gardeners County Extension for more information in your area.

I live in Upstate New York and have a small vegetable garden.  There really isn’t enough room to rotate my crops.  Every year my tomato plants get various viruses and powdery mildew.  I would like to know if there is a mulch of some kind that I can put on the soil around my plants so that the soil doesn’t splash on the tomatoes.  This is the only way I can think of to stop all the viruses, etc.  Does anyone have any thoughts on this??

We planted a cover crop winter mix in the fall, in our backyard terraced garden. It has done great, I have been prepping to cut it down, give it time to decompose. I have been really into the no till philosophies, read up about the possibility of just leaving it cut down, no till, as a mulch. But I just read something else that says the nitrogen benefits are lost if it is not tilled in. I am confused, any advice? I am all about the low maintenance gardening, companion planting, without too much intervention (not that we are opposed to the work).

Life is too short to hesitate. My 14 year old Grandson, Bronson, raced BMX bicycle competitions from age 8 to age 11. He is a natural born athlete as are many in our family. But he has an unusual ability in this particular sport. He decide to start racing again this summer half way through the season and immediately started winning so he went to the Nationals after 8 races and took 1st in races 1 & 2 and finished 2nd in the finals.

Because he did so well he caught the eye of a pro (Bubba was slated for the Olympics until he shattered his ankle) that invited him to go to his training camp. Well by the time they were done with Brons they told his parents he was good enough to go to the Grand Nationals. So today I sat with my daughter (Bronson’s mom), my mother, husband, oldest son, and several grandchildren and watch this sweet hearted young man beat the pants off of his most dreaded competitor who had the best gate and all the advantage while Bronson had the worst gate and no advantage. HE DUSTED HIM! I could brag for hours but I’ll spare you. The point is he could have let a thousand things stop him and had every reason to be discouraged when he got to Oklahoma but he pushed through every discouragement and won the race.

So how does that carry over to your garden you ask? Let me tell you. Don’t be afraid, press on, just try things. The worst thing that can happen is it won’t work! I get so many questions from gardeners all over the US that want to know if this or that will work in their area. I try to do the best research I can and give the best advice available but I always say in the end, you really don’t know what will work unless you try it. (more…)

I think that cover crops have great potential for use in suburban environments, and I’m not just talking about large swaths of green grass that cover our yards…

Many Versatile Uses 

Cover crops, such as clover, rye, vetch, grains, certain peas and beans, and many beautiful pollinator-attracting plants, have the ability to pull nutrients from deep in the soil, effectively mining minerals out of the ground and making them available to other plants.  They serve as great “green” or Nitrogen-rich compost material, and many will readily regrow when sheared.  They can be used as mulch by cutting lush growth and letting it lay on the ground around plants.  You can keep unwanted weeds at bay because a well-selected cover crop will choke them out.  Many cover crops are drought-tolerant once established, needing little supplemental water, yet casting shade and retaining soil moisture underneath their small canopies.  They can serve as meadows…pollinator gardens…erosion control…nutrient retention…I could go on…and on…

Books

There are many books on the subject, a favorite of mine is Gaia’s Garden - A Guide to Homescale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway.  Peaceful Valley carries many books on the subject of cover cropping as well.

Nature abhors a vacuum - weeds will make their way to bare patches of soil in our yards, and as nature has designed, break up the earth to allow for larger shrubs and trees to grow with the help of the wind and birds.   Mother Nature continually tries to reforest herself, but we can use this to our advantage by planting a cover crop that will stop weeds from germinating.  Are you losing a battle with weeds on your property?  A cover crop may be the answer for you.

My Yard 

Last Summer my husband and I decided to convert half of our back lawn into an orchard.  Now I’m not talking an acre here, just about 20′ x 30′ - enough room for a few drawf fruit trees like most suburban lots.  But first, the soil definitely needed to be improved.

In the middle of our blazing Northern California summer, we stopped watering the future orchard site to kill the grass (we could have sheet mulched as well).  Once the fall rains came, we tilled the dead grass into the soil, and spread a cover crop seed.  With the moisture in the soil from the rains, the cover crop germinated quickly, and covered the area with lush green growth in short time. 

In late winter, we tilled this cover crop back into the soil, providing nitrogen, and other trace elements to the newly planted bare-root fruit trees (which have put on quite a bit of growth just since January!).  Our next step is to reseed a cover crop around the trees that will cover the bare earth and attract pollinators to our mini-orchard.

I hope that you will consider a versatile cover crop for your many needs as well.

Katie at GardenPunks