Planting for a 4-Season Harvest, Part 4
Mulch
Replaced After Soil Heats Up
As with the peas, the leaf
mulch is raked aside before planting and
afterwards, when the ground heats up, is raked back again. This
mulch is also necessary over the winter to keep my clay soil from
compacting and getting water-logged; it makes early planting
possible. Using mulch year after year also loosens and lightens
the soil.
No special preparation for
planting may be needed; often I just make a
furrow and plant. But for long-rooted crops in clay soil, better
results will be obtained when a two-foot strip along the row is loosed
with a spading fork. This applies particularly to beets, carrots,
parsnips --- all your crops, if there's time. It's not too much
work, and the whole garden can be done in a few years by alternating
rows --- in any one year I never spade up the entire garden. Read more....
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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