Fall Vegetable Bed Care

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Any you's 5-6 a-b area gardeners do anything special (fertilizer?) to yer vacant vegetable patches in the fall/pre-winter; if you's do, what?

I had left over Jobes Organics Granular (https://jobescompany.com/product/jobes- ... -granular/) last fall and distributed it amongst my raised beds thinking it might do some good come spring; is that thinking sound?

The Gotch

[MissS]

The only nutrient that I perhaps will add is bone meal. Nitrogen and potassium can move quickly while phosphorus usually is quite stable. Bone meal takes some time to break down and become available to your plants so adding it in fall gives me a head start.

I would hold off spreading your expensive fertilizers now and wait until the ground thaws in spring. That will give you plenty of time for things to get your soil going without wasting everything before you even have a plant in the ground.

[bower]

With the wet winters we've had lately, I've gotten more focused on trying to prevent both the free nutrients (like N) and the soil itself from washing away. Cover crop type approach. This can end up being extra work, especially without a tiller where everything has to be dealt with by hand. But it does add nutrients to the ground instead of letting them leach away.
Buckwheat, radishes, and some random brassica seeds I had too many of, is what I'm trying this time, as a cover of young plants that will be killed by frost and turn nutrients back to the soil, while holding the surface with their roots.
Also trying strawberries as a rotation for garlic, in beds I don't need for other vegetables. I've not fall planted strawberries before but since I had lots of plants I'm trying it out. IDK if they will do much to hold the soil though, since I didn't plant them too close to each other.

I like the idea of using up old seeds to make a cover crop. I still have one bed that I didn't put anything into (but there are weeds). It might be too late for this year, but just raking in some older vegetable seed wouldn't be a bad plan for a cover that dies back, as long as you aren't planting the same veggie in that bed the next season.
Ideally you can then till the dead plants under in spring and feed them to the dirt.
I might have to pull them out and compost them instead.

[Paulf]

Elemental sulphur is applied in late fall after clean up and fall tilling. Sulphur takes time to be effective. NP and K fertilizers are applied in early spring according to a professional soil test done every year. No sense applying unnecessary product.

[bower]

I forgot to mention lime, which is the fall treatment alternative to sulfur if you have acid soil. For some reason our soil acidifies at a great rate, so fall applications of lime are advised. That depends on your soil pH though. I sometimes do in spring but fall is recommended.

[JRinPA]

Since I bought a big bag of daikon a few year back, I tend to use that as cover crop. It is especially good for going into spring potatoes. If no cover crop, I try to add a few inches of shredded leaves, or leave the black mulch down. All depends on the row and how much thought, time, and effort I put into it. Also, the weather.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Since I bought a big bag of daikon a few year back, I tend to use that as cover crop. It is especially good for going into spring potatoes. If no cover crop, I try to add a few inches of shredded leaves, or leave the black mulch down. All depends on the row and how much thought, time, and effort I put into it. Also, the weather.

LUV Daikons, but you's plant them in the fall?

I do amend the beds with a neighbor's shredded leaves.

The Gotch

[DriftlessRoots]

In fall I just strip and weed the beds and I don't apply anything but a layer of leaves. The only fert I use is per plant with tomatoes and peppers when they go in.

[JRinPA]

As a cover crop, yeah. But I do pull some to eat. Some of them are getting pretty big already. No one around here seems to eat them.

[Gardadore]

Am in 6A. Just planted a lot of new bulbs for spring and gave them all bone meal or Espoma Bulb Tone and then put decomposing wood chip mulch over them more as a hopeful deterrent against squirrels digging them out. I also sprinkle bone meal or BulbTone on beds with older bulbs and any leaves I can rake together for the flower beds. Vegetable beds get straw for a mulch but no fertilizer till spring. Maybe homemade compost if time. Tomatoes are grown in straw bales or small Earthboxes. One old bale which has broken down gets placed on top of old bale next to it and replaced with new bale. New bale breaks down over the winter so I can easily dig out a hole and fill it with potting mix and fertilizer. Fertilizer is added to old bales when tomato seedling is planted in the bales.
Must try doing a cover crop at some point. But big veggi garden got away from me this summer for a variety of reasons so must weed first! Maybe next year!

[Danny]

Horse and cow manure spread to rot down.

[JRinPA]

Bone meal. I just made bone meal today, sort of I guess. After making deer scrapple I ran the remaining pressure cooked bones through the shredder. It mixed with a little bit of browns leftover in there. Rib bones and such I can crush by squeezing, but the larger bones are still solid.

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That has to be at least 50% bone. So, how strong is this for supplying calcium/phoshporus/magnesium versus a bag of purchased "bone meal"? I'm wondering how far I should spread out one hundred pound deer worth of bones. (like 5 lb or less of pressure cooked bones) How many sq ft would it cover?