One of my beds was overrun this year by annual rudbeckia that grew from
seed and crowded out other plants. Now that it's nearly fall in
zone 4, I'm going to clean up the bed for the winter. Ordinarily I would pull all the rudbeckia and put them in the compost, as I want the bed back for planting next year.
This year I've been reading about
"green manure" and
cover crops, so it occurs to me there might be a benefit to just turning the rudbeckia over into the soil to compost in place. I'm not aware of anything about rudbeckia that would provide any particular benefit to the soil, but my thought is that it would at least be an addition of organic matter.
QUESTION: Any thoughts? Is this inadvisable for any reason? If I do it, should I remove any
flowers first so as not to repeat the problem next year, or is there a depth from which
seeds wouldn't germinate?
This is my first post, so I'm looking forward to responses!
