2 years ago, my garden area was an old abandoned calf pen with grass/weeds about 3' tall. The first year we owned the place, a doe had a fawn hidden in that area for a couple of weeks, lol. I was still living in Wyoming with our dogs at that time.
The grass roots were really thick - I hate crab grass - you could literally peel back the sod and have it form a mat that you can carry to the wagon to be hauled to the compost pile. The compost looks really good, can't wait to get that moved to the garden area too.
With the tillage - every year it is getting better about weed growth. I need to get the weed seed load in the soil down to an acceptable level - weed seeds will blow in every year, but the base load is going down nicely.
Besides, it is still too cold to really plant anything, so tilling is just helping to warm the soil faster.
I plan on using newspaper under/around my tomato plants, with a heavy mulch on top of that. I am hoping that will stop the dirt from splashing up onto the tomatoes and causing disease problems.
The grass roots were really thick - I hate crab grass - you could literally peel back the sod and have it form a mat that you can carry to the wagon to be hauled to the compost pile. The compost looks really good, can't wait to get that moved to the garden area too.
With the tillage - every year it is getting better about weed growth. I need to get the weed seed load in the soil down to an acceptable level - weed seeds will blow in every year, but the base load is going down nicely.
Besides, it is still too cold to really plant anything, so tilling is just helping to warm the soil faster.
I plan on using newspaper under/around my tomato plants, with a heavy mulch on top of that. I am hoping that will stop the dirt from splashing up onto the tomatoes and causing disease problems.