How to Best Put Your Garden to Rest

My partner and I just recently purchased a travel trailer, and we’re planning on living in it full time for at least a few months out of the year, and with that I’m wondering how to best upkeep the garden while we’re gone.

I’ve been building a decent sized garden in our backyard for about five years now that consists of a few raised beds, in ground, hugels and a food forest section. The yard is Bermuda grass which is what I’m mostly worried about since it’s a constant battle to keep it from encroaching into the garden space.

I’m obviously not trying to grow any annuals at this time, but I’m wondering would be best for keeping things as well protected as possible during long periods of not growing anything intentionally. Cover crops just left in the beds? Covering the beds w a deep deep mulch? What do you guys think??

Hi Christopher. It's tough to make good suggestions without some hint of where you are on Planet Earth. The posters here sort of span the entire globe.

Me, I'm trying to:
- add late compost (whatever crazy magic mix of compost/char/etc. I've concocted this year)
- break up the soil by hand, as deep as I can, in vertical chunks, so it captures and holds spring melt moisture, and doesn't go anaerobic
- bust up the surface where slugs have been prolific, so their eggs are destroyed in the cold
- in certain areas, once the growies are out, dig down and replace chunks of pure-sand subsoil and replace with a slurry of compost-tea-infused straw/char/wood chips to hopefully hold  water and nutrients (if that sounds like a lot of work, all done by hand with a shovel, you are correct, but that's the price, and I don't need a gym membership either)

Christopher said, "I’m obviously not trying to grow any annuals at this time, but I’m wondering would be best for keeping things as well protected as possible during long periods of not growing anything intentionally.

My suggestion would be to cover those beds with wood chips.  The recommended depth is 6 inches.

These would chips will help keep out weeds while building soil health.

Here are some threads that you or others might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/120453/Great-Wood-Chips

https://permies.com/t/137179/Wood-chips-working

Have fun using that travel trailer and seeing the world.

And my take would probably be to plant a cheap tough cover crop like clover.

For me planting clover or something similar would be cheaper than laying wood chips, and easier to clean up when I came back.

Alternatively if you're beds are full of self-seeding annuals you could just let them go fallow and enjoy the fall-out.