When to dig in the fall. Why do they dig up the ground in the fall?

When to dig in the fall. Why do they dig up the ground in the fall?

If the soil is excessively clogged with weeds, it is initially simply loosened. As a result of increased access to oxygen, weeds begin to actively germinate. After just two weeks, they move on to the next stage of digging, during which they remove:

• rhizomes of dandelions and wheatgrass;
• larvae of May beetles and wireworms.

Digging the soil allows you to detect and destroy underground passages of pests and rodent burrows.

This agrotechnical procedure allows you to saturate the soil with useful elements. While digging the beds, summer residents apply organic and mineral fertilizers.

If large pieces of earth form during digging, they do not need to be broken up. They will retain moisture and prevent the soil from compacting.

Weed control

Weeds are the worst enemies of summer residents. They grow quickly, causing significant harm to cultivated plants, taking away a significant portion of their nutrients, shielding them from sunlight. It is for these reasons that no gardener will put up with the presence of weeds in the garden. Several times a month during the season it is necessary to carry out weeding to destroy weeds.

Digging is an agrotechnical procedure that is one of the most effective in the fight against weeds. When carrying out such actions, the roots of the weeds appear on the surface, they are easy to detect, collect and throw away.

Of course, it will not be possible to ensure 100% destruction of weed rhizomes, but when digging, the strength of even the remaining weeds is significantly weakened. In the spring, less unwanted grass will begin to grow in such an area.

Fertilizer application

When deciding whether it is necessary to dig up the soil in the garden in the fall, owners of garden plots receive affirmative answers. Experienced summer residents explain that digging allows you to add nutrients to the soil and contribute to its deoxidation.

Organic and mineral fertilizers act as nutrients.

It is simply wrong to throw fertilizers around the garden. First you need to decide which vegetable or berry crops you plan to plant in specific beds in the spring.

After this, compost or humus is added to the areas where it is planned to grow seedlings, cabbage or cucumbers in the next season.

Mineral fertilizers will not be superfluous for any plants, so they can be distributed throughout the garden.

Change in soil acidity

To reduce the acidity of the soil, it is recommended to add ash to the soil. If you simply sprinkle ash on top, it will be useless to expect any improvements.

The deoxidation effect will be achieved when the ash is mixed with the soil. This can only be achieved by digging up the area.

Minuses

Along with the multiple advantages that accompany the procedure of digging up a site, there are also tangible disadvantages:

• Such work is never easy and one has to experience excessive physical fatigue. Therefore, experienced summer residents recommend a sensible approach to this task, digging up the soil only where there is really a need for it.
• When using the wrong digging technique, soil inhabitants change places, which quite often negatively affects the condition of the soil.

For this reason, when digging, it is recommended not to turn over the extracted layer of earth, but to move it. Carrying out the digging procedure itself in the absence of a target is also not entirely correct.

Reason 2. To get an environmentally friendly harvest

During normal digging, it is convenient to add fertilizers to the soil. In the case of no-moldboard processing, it will be more difficult to carry out such a procedure, which means that the risk that you will add more fertilizer than necessary is reduced. In addition, plant roots from previous harvests can be an excellent alternative to fertilizing (provided that they are not affected by diseases and do not contradict the principles of crop rotation).

One of the objectives of organic farming, of which no-tillage is part, is the preservation of soil organisms that improve the structure of the soil. Therefore, it is advisable not to use dangerous chemicals to control weeds, pests and plant diseases.

To dig or not to dig a garden. How can you grow everything you need and want on 4 acres?

And then a fateful meeting happened in my life: out of a passion for floriculture, I was introduced to an amazing woman who managed to grow everything she needed and everything she wanted on the 4 acres she had available.

I would never have believed that this could happen, but she invited me to her place, and I saw everything with my own eyes and heard everything with my own ears.

She only digs holes in the ground for planting large seedlings. For everything else, he simply rakes it with his hands - throws potatoes in there, arranges dahlia tubers, small sections of perennials, bulbs, seeds, sprinkles them, waters them and waits for the result. There is no bare land! Unoccupied - only narrow paths covered with cardboard.

Potatoes and cabbage grow beautifully under dahlia bushes (more than two dozen varieties); garden strawberries occupy the entire space under apple and currant trees. There is a small patch of strawberries in the open space, but it turns out that daffodils and tulips grow there (this was not visible in August).

Carrots grow with onions, beets are planted singly everywhere, peas and beans trudge along the fruit-bearing bushes. Pumpkins hang on the fence. Cucumbers and tomatoes are in the greenhouse, mixed with melons and watermelons. Tall tomatoes are also on supports, next to raspberries.

Perennials grow and bloom under the bushes. Grapes, lemongrass, actinidia - near the walls of the house and garage do not bother anyone. At the same time, one hundred square meters is given over to flowers: roses, daylilies, lilies, aquilegias, astilbes, asters, begonias, pyrethrums, bells, gladioli, phlox, geraniums...

She supplied me with planting material for the next few years before we moved - thanks to her! And I, along with my own acquisitions, densely planted all the free space on my 8 acres. At the same time, every year she tests new products and all sorts of exotic things. At home too - everything is in plants, but this is a separate topic.

Its cultivation technology: in spring and autumn, the entire area, except for the paths, is covered with hay, or straw, or soybean meal. During the summer, all pulled weeds are stored here. All the tops and all the kitchen waste fermented with Baikal-EM remain here. I listened to a whole lecture about this drug and was very impressed. As the excursion progressed, I tried everything ripened and became even more enamored.

Now I was ready NOT TO DIGGING! But the husband was not ready, and, most importantly, the land was not ready.

Heavy loam that dries out in the heat to a stone state. I remember once, at the beginning of my gardening career, I was digging a piece of land for potatoes (my husband was away), where dogs played in the spring (they trampled them, of course). The complete impression is that you are digging asphalt.

For several years, I improved the soil structure by mulching with grass and weeds and watering with Baikal-EM solution. I managed to give up hilling potatoes completely. From digging up beds for everything that is planted with seedlings - too. They also stopped feeding with manure and mineral fertilizers.

All weeds, plant and kitchen waste - into the garden and beds!

The engine of further progress, as usual, was laziness. The organization of the compost heap somehow didn’t work out: folding, watering, turning - it’s such a hassle! And all the weeded and mown grass went first to raspberries, honeysuckle, and currants. With a layer of kitchen waste.

The berries became larger, the bushes were healthier, and the fishing worms, to the delight of my husband, sharply increased their demographic indicators. The next year, grass and weeds, of which there was no shortage, went into the beds, under potatoes, under strawberries. The plants liked it, and so did I - the number of weeds decreased, only malicious ones made their way through the layer of grass.

After that, I decided to take another drastic step, which caused a stormy protest from my husband: refusal to hill potatoes. The second hilling (he survived the first) was replaced with a thick layer of grass mulch. The harvest turned out to be no worse, but there was significantly less work. A bonus for all mulched plants was the reduction in watering - under grass mulch, moisture is retained longer, and dew also condenses in the morning.

Digging the garden in the fall. What is good about autumn digging?

It is especially necessary to dig up the garden in the fall for heavy, uncultivated clay soils. At the same time, work is also carried out on other types of soil. Autumn digging of the garden has the following advantages:

• When deep cultivation of the soil in the garden, all pests rise to the top. Colorado potato beetle, wireworm, rodents, cabbage grass, caterpillars - they will all be eaten by birds or die from the cold, wind, and sun.
• At the time of autumn digging, weeds sprout under the still warm daytime sun. Stronger crops then die at the first frost. An ungerminated weed dies from wind and cold while still at the seed stage.
• During autumn digging, the remains of cultivated plants go into the ground. They simultaneously fertilize the soil and work as a leavening agent.
• In well-loosened soil, nitrogen-fixing microorganisms begin their active activity. They enrich the earth with all the forms of nitrogen it needs.

How to dig with a shovel correctly

• When digging your garden in the fall, you create better moisture retention (precipitation in the form of rain and snow). In the spring, such soil, warmed by the sun, will be more convenient for plants. It will create a kind of greenhouse effect for them.
• The ability to add the necessary fertilizers to the soil, which will completely rot and rot over the winter. Most often it is wood ash, green manure, sawdust moistened with urea.

Important: when digging up your garden in the fall, it is important to remove all fallen leaves from it. It is a mistake to think that it will become a good fertilizer. Often the foliage can harbor diseases and pests that will begin their harmful activities in the soil.

As a last resort, you can then cover the dug-up garden with fallen leaves. In the spring it will need to be removed from the beds.

And the most important advantage of digging the garden in the fall is that by doing this work on the eve of winter, we make it easier for ourselves to carry out spring tillage before planting. In the warm months, it will be enough to just loosen the soil a little and form beds.

Reason 1. To preserve and increase the number of beneficial soil organisms

Soil is the habitat of many insects, bacteria and fungi, some of which are responsible for soil fertility and maintaining the natural balance in it. During dump digging, the natural balance is disrupted, beneficial organisms die along with harmful ones. As a result, the land becomes impoverished and loses its valuable properties. And it will be quite difficult to restore soil fertility in the future.

Do not worry that the soil will become less loose after non-moldboard cultivation. Worms and beetles will remain in it, which will successfully loosen the top layer of soil and make it suitable for growing plants.

Do I need to dig up my garden before planting? Preparing for sowing

Moisture

Plants contain quite a lot of water. It keeps them elastic and participates in all vital processes. With the help of water, nutrients move throughout the plant body, and evaporation protects it from overheating. With its deficiency, vegetables become coarse, tough, and bitter in taste. On the contrary, if there is an excess of water during cultivation, the products will be watery, low in flavor, and tasteless.

If the soil breaks up into small pieces when rolled, but still forms a cohesive piece when squeezed, this is a hard-plastic state, which means that the seeds and seedlings will require additional watering. If, when squeezed, the lump does not change shape and the pieces do not stick together, then the conditions for seed germination and seedling survival are very poor: there is no water in the top layer of soil.

Spring digging

It is necessary to dig up the soil right before sowing or planting so that the moisture does not evaporate. If the digging is done and the sowing is postponed, the prepared bed can be covered with old film, carefully pressing the edges with soil or stones.

In the spring they dig up with obligatory rotation of the formation. Even if you did the same work in the fall, this activity must be repeated in the spring in order to detect and select the rhizomes of perennial weeds and soil pests - wireworms (larvae of the click beetle) and others. At the same time, fertilizers and other additives can be incorporated into the soil.

What to contribute?

Before digging, mineral fertilizers are evenly scattered over the entire surface of the emerging ridge. Per 1 m2 add: ammonium nitrate, superphosphate, chlorine-free potassium fertilizer (30 g of each per 1 m2) or complex fertilizers containing nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium (100–120 g). Organic fertilizers are added right along the way to every third or fourth groove between the dug and undug parts of the soil.

Photo: AiF/E. Shutova

Fresh manure can only be applied to cucumbers, zucchini, and pumpkins (5–8 kg per 1 m2). If you “treat” potatoes with it, it will cause scab; carrots, parsnips, and root parsley will react by branching their roots; the bulbs of manured onions will ripen later. Semi-rotted manure and compost are applied under cabbage, potatoes, rutabaga (4–6 kg per 1 m2). Carrots, parsley, parsnips, celery, onions, radishes, lettuce, and dill are grown in areas where organic fertilizers were applied last year. On poor soils, 2–3 kg per 1 m2 of only completely decomposed manure or compost (humus) can be added to these crops. The duration of action of organic fertilizers on heavy soils is up to 3–4 years, on sandy soils – up to 2 years.

If there is a need for liming in the spring, then chalk, slaked lime, quicklime, dolomite flour, cement dust, wood ash and other calcium-containing materials - 300-500 g per 1 m2 - are scattered evenly on the soil surface along with mineral fertilizers and immediately dug up, to prevent nitrogen loss from mineral fertilizers.

Photo: AiF/E. Shutova

Do you need garden beds?

In the conditions of the North-West and in damp areas, it is better to grow vegetable crops on ridges or ridges - the soil in them warms up faster in the spring and is freed from excess moisture. On light soils, beds are made up to 10 cm high, on loamy soils – up to 15–20, a convenient width is 1 m. In the process of forming the beds, the soil is loosened and leveled with a rake. The edges are formed so that along them there are ridges 5–8 cm high: they will prevent the soil from washing away during watering or rain.

Nutrition

Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) are the main nutrients that plants need. What they need most is nitrogen, which promotes the growth of green leaves. Phosphorus gives plants energy and promotes root development, creates disease resistance and affects flower and fruit set. Potassium is involved in the formation of tissues and the construction of the entire plant, promotes the development of powerful roots. Increases plant resistance to diseases and their cold resistance, ensures better preservation of products. In addition to the three elements mentioned above, plants need calcium, magnesium and trace elements in small quantities. In addition to them, vegetable crops need humus (humus).

Digging the garden in the spring. Spring digging of soil

Spring digging of the soil helps to increase its fertility and restore it. It allows you to enrich the soil with oxygen, significantly improve its structure, destroy the larvae of various pests, and also use deeper layers for growing crops. Plant roots develop much better in well-dug soil; accordingly, thanks to digging, they will be able to absorb a variety of nutrients much better and in much larger volumes.

how to do spring digging

The area cultivated in the fall is loosened with a harrow or rake in early spring - this is necessary so that the moisture accumulated in the ground can be preserved. The soil that has ripened after harrowing begins to be dug up. It is not difficult to determine the ripeness of the soil - to do this, just squeeze a lump of earth in your hand. if no moisture is released from it and a lump thrown onto the ground from the height of a human chest immediately crumbles - this is direct evidence that the soil is ripe and ready for digging. Spring digging or plowing is carried out at 3/4 of the depth of autumn digging, so that the top layer of soil buried in the fall along with weed seeds does not accidentally end up turned upside down. At the end of spring cultivation, the area is thoroughly harrowed to avoid drying out the soil.

The part of the land allocated for planting late crops must be additionally dug up again or at least loosened before sowing. If the area was not properly cultivated in the fall, in the spring it is plowed or dug up in thin layers so that the soil begins to crumble into small lumps. Damp and heavy clay soils are dug up twice in the spring, after which the soil must be loosened. It should be remembered that its top layer should always be finely lumpy and loose. During digging, glass, pebbles, any inorganic debris, as well as weed rhizomes should be removed from the soil. Everyone knows that when digging in autumn it is necessary to leave large clods of earth unbroken. As for the spring digging event, immediately after it is completed, the surface of the earth is thoroughly leveled with a rake - there should be no blocks left at all. However, the cutting of the soil should not be too fine, so that lumps of earth do not turn into dust - this is no less harmful than the presence of large blocks, because the soil sprayed in this way will turn into a very dense crust at the first rain, and the resulting crust will become an obstacle for access of air into the soil, and will also promote the evaporation of moisture. In a word, with the right approach, after cutting the soil, the lumps formed on it should be the size of a hazelnut.

After leveling the soil with a rake, marking the places for future sowing, make small furrows 3–5 cm deep. After this, you can safely sow cereals and flowers. All crops are carefully sprinkled with soil, compacted and rolled (for cereals this is very important), then lightly mulched and watered. In dry weather, covering with lutrasil will be useful. It should be mentioned that a good solution when digging the soil is to add humus. But it’s better to refuse fresh manure - many flower crops simply cannot tolerate it. Various organic fertilizers should be applied simultaneously with digging the soil.

digging up soil and green manure

Spring digging will be most suitable for well-drained, light soils. Ground cover vegetation and green manures planted near the main crops can help make the top soil layer lighter. in addition, they serve as an obstacle to the spring and autumn leaching of all kinds of nutrients from the soil (for example, by rain), as well as to water erosion of the soil, which often affects areas located at a slight slope. Sown green manure is also a good prevention against nematodes, so you should not neglect them.