notillgrowers

Open full view…

Early spring hoop house bed prep

mcardlesmarket
Fri, 22 Mar 2019 19:45:32 GMT

Hello there. I am up in western MN where most of the ground still has 3ft of snow on it. We are starting to melt now and this is my first spring having any sort of tunnel. Question is right now it is wet inside from the snow melt. I have clear plastic down inside to help warm soil up and hope next Friday to start planting greens and radishes. Only problem is we will not be able to get any compost around here in bulk untill at least middle to end of May. So I tilled the area last fall as this was opening up a whole new area and got rid of any weeds but now I can’t ammend the soil at all. I have composted pelleted chicken manure I will put down. But would you wait till you can put compost get the seedbed better and not plant any spring crops. Or go ahead get what you can and amend before cucumber and tomatoes go in?

farmerjesse
Sun, 24 Mar 2019 08:40:08 GMT

You can absolutely grow them in that soil without a top dressing of compost and just the chicken manure. Especially if it’s new ground. You will likely have to and want to cultivate it a few times, but if you are wanting to do a deep mulch system, whenever that first crop comes out you can cover the bed with compost. If you want. You may like no cover—this is the Neversink model, and what Alex Ekins does at Ace of Spades (both break down their methods in their podcast episode). Hope that helps!