[pdblake]

I have a bed full of phacelia, grown for green maure. It is quite tall and getting out of hand now. It is flowering too, and I'd like to cut it down and use it as mulch around the plot, to break down over winter.

If I just strim it will it carry on growing so I can leave it in situ to dig in later?

[gremlin]

In my experience the frost kills it off. You will be left with a load of sticks.  It is quite disappointing how little organic matter you are left with after the jungle dies back.

Your mulch will drop thousands of seeds round your other plants.

I don't think you will get anything much sprouting from the strimmed off stumps.

I have found that the easiest thing (for me) is just to pull up armfuls of phacelia and stuff it all in the compost bin.

[Carollan]

I grew it for the first time this year ,because the soil was too wet for anything else mainly!

I had no trouble pulling it out of the ground,I preferred it to the winter tares I grew the year before because twas a pretty blue It makes a good mulch for one patch of soil mixed in with comfrey leaves.No annual weeds have grown compared to the rest of the allotment,although the nettles/docks and bindweed are still rampantly pushing their way through..........

[Salmo]

The real value of phacelia as a green manure is that it takes up spare nitrogen and turns it into green leaf. When this is dug in the rotting leaf gradually releases the nitrogen back into the soil.

I usually just tread it flat and chop it a bit with a spade as I dig it in.

If you strim it lightly to take off the flowering bits it will exist in a battered state all Winter unless the frosts are very hard. That is the big advantage of phacelia, it is easy to manage and never takes over. Even if you leave it too long and it sets seed the seedlings are easy to hoe off or turn in.

[mumofstig]

The tops always get frosted here, so I leave it to rot in situ, by spring it has all disappeared.

The roots do a wonderful job in opening up the soil though 

[pdblake]

Thanks all.

I guess I'll leave it until spring then.