Tiller looks like my tiller has made a clod garden?

[agcomike]

I have more like a cement top and about 3-4" down it's slightly wet.. the clods are so hard i can't break them with hand pressure but i can hit them on black top and make them crumble.. looks like this year's garden's going to be poor but i'll plant me some plants and find someway of getting some organic material in the soil to fixer' up..

or i may just fix me a japanese rock garden to go along with my jap. tractor maybe that's the problem? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[Anonymous Poster]

The only real way to combat this over time is to amend the soil...start by adding compost and other organics and use your tiller to mix it wilt the clay. Your goal should be to reduce the amount of clay to solve the problem!

 

[Anonymous Poster]

If I read this right, you have clay soil, a steeper sidehill, plowed it when it was wet (because it never dries out) and now you have clods that don't break up even with the tiller.

Yup, I'd say that is right. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Here is _the_ problem. Water rains down, enters the poorer soil at the top of your hill rapidly, filters down to the clay layer, and then follows the clay to where it totally saturates the ground and has to bleed out of the ground - usually somewhere about the middle of a hillside. This will continue to bleed out for weeks & weeks, every rain will recharge the weeping sidehill. It's really a mini-spring. The sun & wind will dry the surface, but the pool of water will lurk just below the surface.

I know. I have several 100 acres of farm _just_ like that.

You need to plow when it is dry, or in fall & let the cold winter weather the clods.

Adding stuff as others suggested will help long-term. Tiling will also help long-term.

For this year, dragging (harrowing) the clods shortly after a rain will break them up. You need to hit it when the outsides are dry, but the insides of the clods are still damp. Kinda touchy on needing the right rain & right timing. Doing heavy tillage at that time (like the tiller) will just create a new layer of compacted soil - you want this to be just a real light pass, to fracture the clods.

Good luck. For this year, mostly time & rainfalls will help. Maybe a good year to haul in some composte or different soil type & get it all blended together. Drainage would be great, but often too spendy to do right for a small plot, and can make bigger problems if done wrong.

--->Paul

 

[agcomike]

here's some pics..

 

[agcomike]

another

 

[agcomike]

one more..

 

[BrettW]

Do you have any idea how much those tightly packed dirt clods would be worth to the Palestinians?

 

[SPIKER]

Hi nomike:

hey I see you have lots of gray clay... I have the brown clay more sticky than anything. try to shovel it and it is like wet concrete... anyhow you can add gypsum, the cheapest and easiest way is to get in contact with a drywall contractor and see if you can get scrap drywall board off of them... many times you can get a pick up truck load or two dropped off by them if they are working near by. ( have had 2 loads put into my garden which is about 1/2 size of yours. ) though I helped hang the house that the scrap came out of because my brother owns the drywall company. he gets calls every now and again from people looking for it too. He gets paid to remove the excess/scrap and has to haul it away and pay to dump it some times so a free dump sight is useful to them... you may even offer to remove the scrap for them and charge them small fee... (usually 1.5 to 3 cents per sq ft of hung dry wall.) average size house would have enough scrap to help you out.

I tilled mine in after it sat for about 3 days in damp but not rainy weather, it breaks up better if it is dry I found out... anyhow I tilled it with about 4 passes in LL2 on my and tiller.

the pic attached you can see the far right side has white spots in the dirt is the tilled in gypsum/drywall board, (ya, the dirt looks black but is actually 90% clay it's just wet!) the taters are growing nice but so poor nothing else even the beans won't grow...

Mark M

 

[JFarms]

Another thing I should have said, I broke up my (brown) clay with the middle buster only when it was fairly wet. Too wet to till, but soft enough for the plow. Plowing helped it dry deeper, and the broken ground was easier for the tiller. But I didn't till until the ground would crumble in my hand. On the bright side, I've heard some of this country's best farmland started out as terrible clay, and only year's of care turned it around. I hope this helps. Best of luck.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

It just looks to me like there is no top soil,or much of it anyways in your spot.You got to have some organic black stuff in there.I'd plant some stuff in it and see what grows,the ground don't got to be fine like flour to grow stuff in,but it does have to have something besides clay in it. What ,I wonder was that ground used for before?If it was dozed,maybe all the top soil was removed,or a good bit of it.Some areas in every location don't have much top soil to begin with.If you could plant a cover crop and lime and fertilizer before you did this year,like red clover or winter rye this fall, a couple of inches of cow or horse manure would also help a lot,than early as you can next spring till it all in. You might have to rotate your garden this way,untill you get some top soil built up. I can't believe all the gardens around your area are that way,if the ground in them look like yours,I don't see how anybody grows anything.Unless you got good rich river bottom land,you got to work on your garden soil a little,or a lot to get it to be good rich soil. RICHARD GAUTHIER