At Home in the Garden
Rye Not?
In the war against weeds, this gardener tests winter rye.
I employed a new weapon in my perennial war with the weeds this year: winter rye. In years past, at the close of growing season, I cleared my garden of spent tomato plants and weeds, put my tomato cages in storage and left the plot at the Chinquapin Organic Gardens fallow for the winter. Every spring, I found it in exactly the same state, swallowed by a sea of thick weeds, some as tall as four feet. "Whoa!" my kids said every spring on our first trip back to the gardens. I'm told the winter rye will eliminate the weeds and, more importantly, the need to spend two to three full days of backbreaking work clearing the plot. Winter rye—known as a type of "green manure"—also should improve the soil in a host of ways, said Amber Kim Dewey, an…
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