bucksacres
Newly Registered
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:58 am
Location: Central Pennsylvania

Fall cover crop help

This spring I put in my first oversized vegetable garden (about 1/3 acre).
Some vegetables did great, others not so great.
But overall, the experience was well worth it and I look forward to getting started next year.
But - I've run into a very concerning snag.
I bought 10 lbs of red clover from my local seed/hardware and put it out on most of the garden as a fall cover crop.
It's been in about 3 weeks on most of the garden, and it's coming up nicely. However, it looks remarkably like grass.
Since all of the pictures I've found on red clover don't seem to suggest it looks anything like grass, I believe that my supplier must have mixed up his seeds and sold me the wrong thing. (something that doesn't surprise me)
But now - what do I do about it?
Do I try and till it under now, leaving a bare garden for the winter?
Do I leave it and trust that I'll be able to till it early next spring before it sets too hard?
Here in central PA we're beyond our first hard frost, and although winters are pretty mild, I don't expect a lot of time for anything to grow until spring. But I learned last year that it was pretty wet in the spring and by the time the garden dried up enough to till, I had already mowed the grass twice.
What do I need to do?

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smokensqueal
Green Thumb
Posts: 392
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:36 pm
Location: St. Louis, MO Metro area

If your worried that it will be to hard to till up next spring I would suggest go ahead and tilling it in now then just layering leaves on top of the garden for protection. Then in spring depending on how many leaves you put on you can till them in or take some off and us them in your compost and till in the rest. My step dad does the leave thing every year and seems to work fine for him.

DaddyChad
Newly Registered
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:49 pm
Location: Tennessee

I would try another cover crop of clover myself. Clover usually has a bacteria around the roots that has a symbiotic relationship with the plant itself. This bacteria converts nitrogen already present in your soil into a useable form for plants.



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