What works for me is dried like hay grass clippings of my lawn, which has nothing applied to it. When I cut, by making windrows, switching direction each pass. I adjust my cutting depth to not make too much, depends on how long since the last cutting and how much I want. Also, it dries faster. I then collect the dry clippings in a lawn sweep and pile near the garden. I spread it on thick.
For me, I need it right when I transplant into the garden, after tillage, I lay planks out, so I don't compact the soil as much with my feet, I plant, then I mulch it with the dry grass clippings. This covers the soil, it helps hold the moisture in this soil of loam/clay and organic matter and I get minimal, if any weeds. Once those plants grow, they shade out the area around them. Drying the clippings makes it easier to handle for mulching and is so much less weight on the lawn sweeper.
I prefer it as green as possible, like a good hay crop, it's loaded with nitrogen and a thick layer of it will grow some nice corn once that rain washes through it, kind of like a tea, all that goes into the soil. Putting it down when I plant, the weeds never get a chance to grow. I've actually packed some garbage cans with a bunch of this for this season, I kept it inside, I also dried it down inside on a tarp before storing it, loosely spread and fluffed up by hand with a fork, then packed it.
One year, I piled a bunch at the end of a sorry looking row of corn in poor soil in a section of my large garden patch. Those plants were the darkest olive drab green stalks I had, and they all had multiple ears. I don't seem to get any weed seed doing this. I have also used 2nd cut hay from the previous season. Do beware that you don't want excess nitrogen, that'll get you good green growth, but you may lack flowering. Never been a problem for me yet, with corn, tomatoes, bell peppers, maybe, same with eggplant, as they like the same things in the soil. I like it because I can walk away from the garden after planting and just worry about watering if it gets dry. Only place weeds have popped up are near the plants themselves, in that little space in between the plant stalk and the edge of the mulch.
The below was a couple years back, the plants were a bit crowded, should have spread them out more, but everything produced like crazy, one of the best I've ever had actually. This year I will cage my tomatoes with my own cages made from fencing fabric, they become a bit of a mess when crammed in. All of this was mulched with my lawn grasses, only fertilizer was dried blood and bone meal that was tilled in. I thought the results were pretty good. I had a pumpkin vine in with cucumbers by mistake and you know that vine went crazy, across the corn and hung basketball size pumpkins off the corn and the fence around the garden, will never forget that.
Upload one or more videos to your post. Photo and video filesizes should be less than 5MB. Formats allowed are gif, jpg, png, ogg, mp4, mov, and avi. Be sure to use filenames without spaces or special characters, and filetypes of 3 digits lower case.
We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today. [ About Us ]
Today's Featured Article - Choosin, Mounting and Using a Bush Hog Type Mower - by Francis Robinson. Looking around at my new neighbors, most of whom are city raised and have recently acquired their first mini-farms of five to fifteen acres and also from reading questions ask at various discussion sites on the web it is frighteningly apparent that a great many guys (and a few gals) are learning by trial and error and mostly error how to use a very dangerous piece of farm equipment. It is also very apparent that these folks are getting a lot of very poor and often very dangerous advice fro
... [Read Article]
Latest Ad:
Sell 1958 Hi-Altitude Massey Fergerson tractor, original condition. three point hitch pto engine, Runs well, photos available upon request
[More Ads]
All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this website, including design and content, without written permission is strictly prohibited. Trade Marks and Trade Names contained and used in this Website are those of others, and are used in this Website in a descriptive sense to refer to the products of others. Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy
TRADEMARK DISCLAIMER: Tradenames and Trademarks referred to within Yesterday's Tractor Co. products and within the Yesterday's Tractor Co. websites are the property of their respective trademark holders. None of these trademark holders are affiliated with Yesterday's Tractor Co., our products, or our website nor are we sponsored by them. John Deere and its logos are the registered trademarks of the John Deere Corporation. Agco, Agco Allis, White, Massey Ferguson and their logos are the registered trademarks of AGCO Corporation. Case, Case-IH, Farmall, International Harvester, New Holland and their logos are registered trademarks of CNH Global N.V.
