As planned back in the winter, this was to be the first "rest" season for The Patch in nearly fifteen years of constant production. Beginning with the spring work up, I went through three separate plantings of winter rye followed each time by a shallow till once the growth was up to about four to six inches in height. This did a fairly decent job of keeping down the weeds although I had to resort to some limited hand weeding last month as the summer heat brought out the worst of the crab grass and purslane. I'm always amazed at just how fast purslane grows under near drought conditions and the volume of biomass that is produced by just one plant. Apparently it is a highly nutritious edible but I have yet to give it a try.
Following the last rye work-up two weeks ago I over seeded with 10 lbs of buckwheat. This is my first time using this cover crop. It sprouts almost overnight and quickly reaches a foot in height. Our stand is about to bloom where it will double as bee forage. Buckwheat is an annual and highly frost sensitive so it will remain in place until late fall. At that point, after it dies down, I'll decide whether to work it in with the fall leaves or just leave in place until spring. Depending on how strong the stems wind up being it may require a light mow first. We shall see. Regardless, cover cropping not only helps maintain soil structure and stability, but it also acts as a host for beneficial arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. As a microbiologist I've been researching this topic the last few weeks and will have a post on it soon. Although I have no formal training in agricultural micro, I'm amazed by just how little we really know about beneficial symbionts and the greater plant microbiome.
We also decided to re-establish our strawberry bed in the long row this time around; making picking a lot easier next spring. It will also be easier to apply the bird block mesh in this kind of row configuration. After three cycles of work up they were finally mulched with straw. So now its a matter of keeping the side leaders cut back but allowing them to fill in between the mother plants. These were "Galletta" plants from Burpee. So far they have been very vigorous with no sign of fungal outbreaks. All 25 plants in the bundle survived.
Besides cover cropping and strawberries the only other real plantings were a couple of rosemary plants for fresh kitchen use and maintenance of five red bud trees for transplant into our wild border next spring.
The raspberry bed received the same rye cover cropping as the main bed but didn't get any buckwheat as this bed will be planted in a few days with fall greens and lots of kale for over wintering. Next spring we will once again establish a new bed of raspberries.
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