I have an area 5' x 45' along side my garage. I just added about 6" of Top Soil to level. I want to plant tomatoes there next year because gets lot of hours of sun. Anyway my question is what to do with this area till next spring. I was thinking to plant an annual red clover "cover crop" Would this be good Idea? If so should I plant now or wait till fall? I am in central Michigan zone 5.
Well Brainless you are not Brainless. The question as I see it is why clover when annual rye may do ya. I'm sure Billy may give you some specifics and if lucky Charlie may intrude along with others. Meanwhile a compost heap may be a consideration.
I kind of had the same situation last year. I added some compost, bagged cow manure and then shredded leaves in the fall. I dug it all in and let the bed rest over winter. This spring I added some slow release organic 4-10-6 granular fertilizer and dug it in with a spading fork two weeks before I set out my tomato transplants. I'm having a wonderful crop of tomatoes this year along with a good crop of muskmelons also.
Rich from PA Zone 5-6
Why not do all the normal maintenance that's typical of mid-summer (mulching, weeding), but plant stuff that'll mature in autumn, like broccoli, collards, chard, lettuce, etc? Use lawn clippings as mulch, if you have a bagging attachment for your mower.
Clover, and various legumes are good for fixing nitrogen in your soil. Your local nursery may have a mix call "green manure" as well. Then there is buckwheat and rye. Both put out an incredible mass of root hairs that add organic material to your soil, and leaves the soil very easy to penetrate, for crops like carrots. I would recommend either buckwheat or rye, and at 6 weeks to planting add 18 lbs chicken manure,
3 lbs bone meal, and an inch of wood ash per 100 sq. ft. No need to dig it in. Cover everything with newspaper. Cover newspaper with alfalfa (lucerne), and hose it all down. Use a trowel to dig small hole when transferring plants to the garden. Pull back mulch if planting seeds, then move back in when it won't block sunlight to the seedling. Maintain mulch at 2" to 3". This technique is called sheet mulching, or lasagna gardening.
And for the best of both worlds, put in some peas that will be delicious in Fall (better than Spring crops, for my money) and also fix nitrogen.
Chris
And for the best of both worlds, put in some peas that will be delicious in Fall (better than Spring crops, for my money) and also fix nitrogen.
Chris =====
And cilantro. And a dozen other things. Just rip through the seed catalog. Self-control has no place in home gardening.
No lie. He's got 45 feet. If I tried to put in a 45 foot garden, my wife would use my own hoe to cut off certain irreplaceable body parts.
Chris
I assume you mean a big toe.
No lie. He's got 45 feet. If I tried to put in a 45 foot garden, my wife would use my own hoe to cut off certain irreplaceable body parts.
Chris =========
He could do 45 feet of collards (assuming he likes them) and end up with bags of frozen greens enough to last all winter. They don't suffer in storage. You cook the bejeezus out of them anyway. And if the bugs find them, so what? Collards laugh at bug damage.
I think that was an excellent approach, Rich.
Tony M.
This would be my plan.
David
If there's an early frost and none of it works, he's out what - $7.37 for seeds?
Many of those will survive quite a bit of frost anyway
D
Uzzactly.
My husband still thinks I'm nuts - I have one bed that runs along my driveway (about 100 feet of it) and another around 30 feet on the other side of the property. A few tomatoes every year and I'm thinking of adding some herbs next year.
And I never threatened harm to body parts when he installed a train/slot car table in one quarter of the main level of the house....
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