New garden question

 

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.

 

 brainless@lamebrain.com wrote:


 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.

--
Bill  S. Jersey USA zone 5 shade garden
     What use one more wake up call?  
  globalvoicesonline.org
  
 

 



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.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/middleeast/2010/07/201072816515308172.html

 


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

 

On 8/4/2010 3:39 PM, EVP MAN wrote:

I think that was an excellent approach, Rich.

Tony M.