Grow a Sustainable Diet by Conner Cindy

Author:Conner, Cindy [Conner, Cindy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781550925548
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Published: 2014-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

Quartet of Beds

I’ve added some things in a four bed plan (Figure 8.3) that go beyond basic gardening skills. In Bed 1, you will see oats that are there to winterkill ahead of the potatoes. In order for that to have happened, the oats must have been planted between mid-August and mid-September to allow enough time to put on good growth and maximum biomass before the cold weather stops it. It will look great until January. A guideline for you to follow would be to plant the oats at least a month or more before your first expected fall frost. If your winter is unusually mild, or for some reason this bed is in a protected place, the oat plants might not die as planned. Potatoes are the next crop intended for that space. I would plant oats in early spring if I wanted them for grain. Oats have a hull on them that would be hard to remove with the threshing methods I use for rye and wheat. If I was growing them to eat I would grow a hulless variety.

My compost piles are on a garden bed and part of the rotation. One year I planted oats, intending them to winterkill, on the south side of the compost bed. The compost piles were enough protection that the oat crop survived and thrived through the winter. It would have been great to have had a bed of winter greens in that spot, to eat through the winter, but not the oats that I wanted to winterkill.

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