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Ca

I'm curious how many growers just mulch every year, and don't turn over the soil. Also, have growers noticed a difference in production of adventitious roots mulching as compared to burying the vines?

8/3/2005 5:37:37 PM

C N Y

i don't know if this applies, probably not,
but, i had a LOT of horse manure put down on my patches in the spring (like late April) and the "soil" itself is more like a mulch now than anything else;
when it is dry out, it almost appears to be like the stuff you see around the bases of trees, from a short distance anyway. must be the sawdust and wood chips in it. i prefer to mix the soil from about a foot down and the stuff that is at the top when i bury a few vines here and there. the manure was tilled into the soil in the spring, but now i think it was tilled not deep enough to get a good mix going...

i am just selecting a spot in the patch where there are no weeds and digging-up the medium, then dropping each shovelful from about 4 feet to mix and break it up and then taking that shovelful to the vine and sprinkling/dumping it on the bases of the leaves. i have had to pull up one or two vines that have had this done to them, to make rooom for a fruit, and they are a-rootin' right along! if not relevant to the question, at least this kept me out of trouble for a few minutes! eric

8/3/2005 6:40:24 PM

Anamosa, IA [email protected]

For years I have been planting tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, sunflowers, etc. on raised ridges with heavy mulch. It helps with wetness in the spring, as the ridges dry and warm up quicker. Very little tilling in the spring, because of no compaction the ridges. Just scraped off early weeds with hoe and set transplants with trowel or seeds with a pointed hoe. Yields have been very good, For my pumpkins, I have been making raised mounds in the fall and mulching the mounds and 10-12' around the mounds with grass clippings in the spring to early summer. I try to keep tillage to a bare minimum. This year I tilled once after weeds started getting real bad, (couldn't hoe much after shoulder surgery, riding mower broke down, etc.). In the fall, I just add more manure, compost,10-10-10 fertilizer etc. and work it in on the mounds only. The area around the mounds justs get surface application only. It has been a real tough year with early cold, then extreme heat, and little rain all around. The pumpkins seem to be doing OK. One thing I did learn was to make the slopes on the mounds flatter, as the main vines get real stressed when they start to lay down.

8/3/2005 7:36:27 PM