Quote:
Originally Posted by GoDawgs
Do you till in your mulch at the end of the season? I've been mulching with leaves for the past two or three years and since fall '17 have not been tilling them in, just broadforking the beds for minimal layer disruption.
The squash will be mulched no differently than they always have been.
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I am using cypress mulch and when I clear a bed to get it ready for the next thing to go in I rake up the mulch and pile it outside the bed until I use it again. Of course each time some of the mulch has rotted near the bottom and some of the smaller stuff just gets worked back into the beds. This has kept my beds rather level since I started using the cypress mulch and I haven't had to add way too much organic matter each year like I used to. I remade all but one of my beds over the past year and have made them 10 inches high so now I am having to add more to raise the levels a bit. Basically I am just adding compost, peat and pine bark fines to raise the level. Each time I work up a bed for new crops I add a very small amount of low phosphate fertilizer, a generous amount of cottonseed meal, some well rotted compost, some alfalfa pellets and a small amount of chicken manure if I can find any. I have to turn my beds with a shovel each time before tilling each time to remove the encroaching tree roots before they get too large. Once I do that add whatever I am going to add and only till the top 3 to 5 inches. At first I thought this would affect my earth worms but I have been using this method for years now and the earth worm population continues to grow. Sometimes due to health reasons I can't get this done and it always results in poorer production and a much harder time getting the tree roots out the next time.
Back before I used the cypress mulch I would use grass clippings, straw and leaves which I would till in after a season in order to add to the organic matter in the beds.
Bill