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Last year, I fought with my new garden. Fought with it the year before, too. Weeds, mostly in the form of grass we thought we had cut out completely, were a HUGE problem. Yields were very low; in fact most of what we planted didn’t yield anything. I got better produce from my compost pile than from the garden!

Causes

Looking back, I think the primary issues were:

• Not getting all the grass cut out or killed
• No soil amendment to speak of
• Insufficient watering when needed

What I’ve already done

At the end of the growing season, I started to tackle the first two problems. First, I set the mowing deck as low as I could get it and mowed the entire garden down almost to dirt. I left the mulching kit on to put all of the newly-cut material back on the ground, rather than lose all that good nutrition for the soil.

Next, I spread all of my finished compost over the garden area (there wasn’t a whole lot) along with fresh grass clippings. I know…I know…what was I thinking? I already had problems with grass growing in my garden! That’s the reason for step three: I covered the whole thing with 5-mil BLACK plastic. I grabbed whatever I could to hold it down – leftover bricks, off-cuts of wood, all kinds of things. I rolled out the downhill side first, then the uphill. That makes most of the rainwater run off rather than in. There’s plenty of rain here in autumn, so keeping it damp underneath the plastic isn’t a problem.

The black plastic serves two primary purposes: first, covering the ground and not letting in any light discourages anything from growing, even my problematic grass. Second, being black, it absorbs any heat it can from the sunshine, which aids in breaking down any organic material underneath.

Amending the soil

The last thing I’m doing over the fall and winter is amending with dead leaves and ashes. I have seven big trees around my house, and by the time all those leaves hit the ground, you can wade through them like a shallow stream. I pulled back the plastic over the garden, hooked up my trusty lawn sweeper behind the mower, swept up the dead leaves, and dumped them over the garden area. A little work with a rake to even them out, then I pulled the plastic back over.

We primarily heat the house by burning wood in the wood stove insert in our fireplace. It’s pretty efficient, although it’s a bit of work. It’s definitely cheaper than running the electric heater here every day (we don’t have gas service, so our HVAC is all electric – talk about expensive). Whenever I’ve peeled back the plastic for adding the leaves, I took the collected ash from the stove and sprinkled it in with the leaves.

Next Steps

As Winter continues and we roll into Spring, I’ll save more ashes and figure out my irrigation. When I uncover the garden and turn everything under, I’ll add the ashes in and install irrigation. I’ll start some seeds inside as we get into the final month or so before planting days. The Old Farmer’s Almanac says the last frost here occurs about April 20th; I plan to start planting near then. Until then, I guess I get to do some work in the shop!

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