I wanted to share some good practices you may want to incorporate in your soil management.
I do this for plants I will grow in the ground and also for plants in my raised beds.
A really good practice is to sow a cover crop. You can sow Rye or some other cover crop that you will either till in or lay a silage tarp on to kill the cover crop so you can begin planting. (See photo)
Sowing a cover crop protects your soil from erosion from either wind or rain, chokes out weeds, and it also delivers bioavailable, nitrogen and nutrients to your soil in anticipation of future crops. That's what we did in this section where future freshcut flowers will be grown.
I got my soil test results back in the fall, amended the soil with lime, then sowed a cover crop. Sow it densely because that keep weeds from growing.
Another important practice that you can begin to utilize, is putting your fall leaves on your raised beds or your soil. The leaf mold breaks down and you will have wonderful, mycorrhizae fungi which help plants take up Phosphorus from the soil. Plants are better able to take up moisture and nutrients which reduces their stress.
If the winds we had over the last few days have blown the final leaves off of your trees, you can put them on your raised beds and growing areas.
There are so many little insects and critters that overwinter in leaves and I usually don't disturb leaves that aren't in our walking path. But when the wind blows more leaves down and if I have time, I will rake them up and put them on my raised beds or on any bed I will be growing in the Spring to deliver nutrients to the soil so I don't have to add synthetic fertilizer.
