Hello, and welcome back to the blog!
We are in the process of preparing the garden for planting! Mr L and I have had the same conversation over and over with regards to the garden. He firmly believes that one cannot grow vegetables in the ground unless one rototills that garden annually in the spring. I am trying to convince him that low or no till approaches are preferable, especially in our location as we have very little topsoil over a granite ledge and are on a grade - I don’t want what little topsoil we do have eroding away due to being tilled up every year!
To that end, this year I (finally!) got cover crop seeds before planting season was fully underway. We went through Rohrer seeds, and got 2 different blends to try out as well as 2 bags of plain buckwheat. In the garden, our primary goal for planting the cover crops is to choke out the stinging nettle and burdock that I fight with every year. We are also hoping the cover crops soak up some of the excess nitrogen we have in our soil. Buckwheat is supposed to be good for mining phosphorus from the deeper layers of the soil, bringing it to the surface where the other plants can access it.
The two blends we got are the “Cool Season Soil Saver” and the “Restoration” blends. Restoration has forage beets in it, and I’m hoping to use that to break up some ground so that next year we can expand the garden to double the size it is now! The soil saver blend has mustard in it, which is supposed to help repel deer. We are going to plant that downhill from the blueberry bushes. The deer around here are entirely too bold about sampling my fruit trees and bushes!
I will be sending soil samples off to the UNH Extension Office lab for testing this week. I will publish the results when I get them in, and I hope you will all join me on the journey towards soil improvement! I am eager to see what we can accomplish over the next few years with low/no till growing and cover crop usage.
Next week we’re going to talk about the poultry testing we had done this morning! (I should have results Tuesday or Wednesday of next week!)
Let me know your experiences with cover crops, if you have any!
