alfalfa

shorter days, somewhat cooler temperatures, creeping die back in the garden = autumn...officially it begins two weeks form this coming wednesday but the time has come to begin preparing the garden beds for winter and, by extension, next spring...my intention is to get out into the community garden next weekend and begin removing the finished plants and prepare to plant green manures, cover crops, and the work with garlic, the first of the fall planters...to get a grip on what i will be doing ( never planted alfalfa before today ) i went out back first...alfalfa is a legume usually grown as forage but since it is a pulse it will set nitrogen as readily as any other...it will, if started early enough, also winter over providing some roots to hold the soil together...the second potato patch in my yard has been fallow and raising a crop of creeping charley since i harvested so this afternoon i dodged the mosquitoes and turned it over with a shovel...broke it up with the warren hoe ( top photo )...i have several packets of alfalfa seed ( second photo ) that i ordered last spring with the rest of the garden seed ( i have been planning this for some time...looking for a good green manure match ) they will cover one hundred square feet of bed and this potato patch was about forty...so i dumped about half a packet into my hand ( bottom photo ) broadcast the seed, and raked it in, adding a fair watering to help germination along...i will add the proper bacterial inoculant after the next rain ( forecast for wednesday )and...after the alfalfa has had time to establish itself...i will add in a bit of winter rye to aid nitrogen retention...i have enough seed left to cover five of the beds in the community garden...i also have ample winter vetch seed as well as dixie clover...so we can still cover all the beds...and it is probably just as well...alfalfa exhibits the curious trait of auto-toxicity...after a bed has been seeded with alfalfa it is difficult to reseed the next season, so like potatoes, the beds it is grown in need to rest and the crop rotated to another area...potatoes should be rotated out of beds for a minimum of three years ( not because of auto-toxicity, but because of viruses and pests )beds need only a year of rest from alfalfa...so the experimentation with matching plants to soil and climate continues...tuning takes time...we will get there...more on the alfalfa as it comes up.