How to shut down my veggie garden for a year?

8 years ago

I have a 40x40 vegetable garden in central Maine. It's securely fenced. The garden has mulched paths made of weed-block fabric; the rows of soil are about 18" wide. This has worked well for several years.

But I expect to have surgery--and possibly sell our home and move elsewhere--in the summer of 2018 (it's a knee replacement + we're trying to downsize due to age). I will not be able to plant seeds or seedlings, maintain them, or harvest this year.

I weeded and dug up the soil last fall, but of course new weeds are probably starting to think about sprouting right now. Some roots hide under every path, but they've been easy to control with a bit of daily effort.

I have two major aims:

1) Avoid having potential home-buyers see a horrifying weedy mess of a former garden.

2) If we stay here another year and I revive the garden, I'd like to avoid having to rip out all those paths, hire someone to till up masses of weeds, cut more weed-block fabric for paths, shovel more mulch on it, etc. (Ideally, either I or the next owner would just do some fairly light weeding and resume planting in 2019.)

Is there some sort of light-blocking plastic I could spread over the garden and weight down with rocks and bricks? Perhaps some other method?

Have any of you ever successfully skipped a year this way?

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Comments (5)

User
8 years ago
A neighbor covered her garden before surgery. Her garden was ~20x20. She used carpet and cardboard. Some weeds grew, the carpet turned greenish (algae?).
mainegrammy thanked User
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
Cardboard over the beds (you can get cartons at the grocery store or even larger ones at a furniture or appliance or bicycle store), and then mulch the whole thing. You want mulch over the weedblock fabric anyway since it breaks down over time in sunlight. A thick layer of shavings from a woodworker or shredded tree trimmings from a tree service or buy an 18 wheeler of mulch and hire a couple of high school students to spread it. If you turn it back to garden in a year, just rake the mulch onto the paths and around the edges and you are ready to go. If you use leaves, you can just turn them in if you decide to garden again. My paths are mulch over cardboard since I don't find landscape fabric as effective.

Or alternatively, just mulch the paths and plant a dense cover crop such as buckwheat or rye or alternate them from bed to bed. They will look nice for most of the season and when turned in will enrich the soil.

No carpet. The previous occupant of my house did that and we had to spend time removing sodden, mildewy old carpet and hauling to the dump. UGH! Probably the nastiest thing I've done in more than 40 years of gardening.
mainegrammy thanked NHBabs z4b-5a NH
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annpat
8 years ago
I use newspapers and cardboard covered with other organic mulches. I hope you've reconsidered the use of plastic. There are definitely more earth friendly and garden friendly options.
mainegrammy thanked annpat
deanna in ME Barely zone 6a, more like 5b
8 years ago
I second NHBabs and annpat on cardboard and mulch. I save all large cardboard I get. I went to the extreme when turning some weedy and/or lawn areas into beds and killed grass using only cardboard and 6" of mulch (it was a large amount of mulch!). It worked wonderfully and was both easier and cheaper than lawn fabric, which would also need mulch. The cardboard is easy to plant through later, whereas the fabric is a pain. The grass flat out died and I had no weed issues in the new area. To just preserve the area use cardboard and some mulch. You won't need 6" of mulch by any means!
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
7 years ago
I ended up doing cardboard covered by mulch in half my veggie garden last summer due some family health issues taking up time that I would normally have spent gardening. So I had a small veggie garden with half cardboard and mulch. I ended up planting some seeds of a long-vined squash and it happily crawled all over the mulched area.
mainegrammy thanked NHBabs z4b-5a NH