Winter Rye seedings.

A true sign that summer is gone is when I begin actually seeding my beds with Winter Rye.  I have been doing this for about 4 years now since I read an article about it on the Rodale Institutes' web site.  October is about the furthest you can push the summer growing season in my area.  In fact, it seems like this year that summer is going to close out early.  Temperatures are leveling off and we have started to see nighttime lows that are beginning to get into the upper 50's.  I don't doubt that we will have a period of Indian summer still to come but, in the final analysis, most of my plants have given their last production at this time. 
I have cleared out all my lettuces, beans and cucumber plants recently.  This week, weather and work permitting, I am going to thin out my non-producing tomatoes and pepper plants.  By the end of next week, all the plants will be removed and thrown in the composters along with my last bag of last years leaves.  Yes, I still had some left.  These will continue to compost through the winter albeit at a slower rate than during the peak summer season.  Once they are all removed, I will seed all the areas with the rye I bought this past weekend from Meyers' Seeds here in Baltimore.
The Rye should continue to grow up until the first hard frost we get.  My experience is that even with a hard frost, they will continue to grow but at a much slower rate.  And, when the weather turns in the spring, they come back to life and begin to grow at their earlier rates.  This gives you excellent green manure when you cut the grass down in the early spring.  You just cut it like grass and let it rot in place.  I will get into more detail on this next year when the time comes.
The goal right now is to get as thick and lush of a seeding in of the rye as possible.  It may take a couple of seedings but if your seed is new, it may take only one time.  I have the other two gardens I help with to seed in for the winter also.  So, it's going to get a bit busy in the next couple weeks but it's all good.    
After these beds are seeded in, I will start to concentrate on growing plants inside my two structures that I have.  I will write about those at length in my next post.  So, for now, that's all there is to report.  Until then, Happy organic gardening everyone!      

Pre-season Fall gardening preparations.

Yes, it is almost that time of the season again.  Yesterday was absolutely a beautiful day so I decided to take advantage and do some preps early.  I cleaned out my bed that has protection for when the weather takes a change in course.  So, I pulled the few weeds there were and decided it was time to add some of compost for nutrient enrichment.

I pulled several shovel fulls of compost and screen sifted them so that I wouldn't have any unfinished compost in my beds.  Here is a picture of before and after compost to show you the reason for the sifting.  The compost in the wood bin is unsifted and  you can certainly see the difference in the compost in the wheel barrel bed.

Then, after sifting several loads, I unloaded it into the bed where I am going to attempt to grow the winter crops.  This is probably about ten shovel fulls of sifted dirt.

I then spread it out to even the bed out.  I will let it now sit and work its way into the soil beneath it.

So, I will water this area a few times to allow for the compost to release the nutrients deeper into the soil.  That, in turn will supply the plants I put in there with the nutrients at their root level.

All the while I was doing this, I was being closely watched by our neighbors super inquisitive dog Meg.  I don't mind a bit.  She's really a sweet dog.  Hopefully she is picking up some pointers.

While I was doing all these preps, I noticed there were several cucumbers and a lot of new pepper blooms.  I watered the area around noon yesterday and followed with another soaking in the evening. A ritual that I always follow with no bad results.  

So, this morning, I went out to the garden and picked the cucumbers.  Can't believe all the cucumbers and peppers I am getting this year.  And no, I am not complaining.   

We will be enjoying these over the next few days.  There is nothing like eating fresh vegetables you have grown from seed to what you see.  Very satisfying indeed.  Well, that's all for now.  Hope you are having a great season.  Happy Gardening everyone!