2020 gardens

[Ford850]

My soil was pretty bad, with some areas more heavy clay than others. I think what helped most was getting more organic matter incorporated. I changed my routine to add it yearly, without taking the gardens out of production. I till the whole garden once. Then I use bales of peat moss, one per 50' row, and spread it in line before I make my second tiller pass just prior to planting that row. I plant that row and move over to the next one, spreading the peat and tilling, and so on through the garden. That puts a moderate mix of peat right where I plant for that year. That improves the soil structure yearly. Next... Most of my crops get mulched with last year's leaves or straw. Tomato and pepper plants are mulched immediately after planting, and seeded rows are mulched once the plants are a few inches tall. Sometimes I mulch with wood chips. That mulch keeps plants moist and roots cool, and it improves the soil structure when it's tilled in at the end of the season. Next... Early fall after clearing most old plants (to a compost pile), I spread the mulch out and till lightly. I then broadcast oats and drag or roll it into the soil. I buy regular cleaned oats sold at Rural King for horses, because it's reasonably priced and convenient. It germinates within a week and covers the garden in a low green mat before freezing off over winter. That gets tilled in when I'm ready to start planting in the spring.
I never used to mess with all this, but started about 10 years ago to improve my soil. I don't mulch or use peat on one larger area where I plant sweetcorn, just planting oats in the fall. That area improved a little over the years. My smaller gardens though, wow! It's made such a dramatic difference it's hard to describe. Even my wife has noticed the better color and feel to the garden soil. This routine is easy, helps the plants hold moisture, and reduces weeds too.

 

[herm0016]

Ok have a question, the last few years our garden has be okay nothing like I would have liked. I'm going to get a soil test to see what it is lacking but my question is about the soil type. We have clay, hard clay, and bedrock so how would any of you combat growing in clay? This stuff is tough and stays soft only by watering. We water at night for about an hour or until the soil is nice and soaked by the end of the next day the soil is dry and cracking.

Anyone grow a garden in this soil type and have any pointers? I was thinking of having a couple loads of topsoil brought in and mixing it with a tiller. The garden is 25x100 so nothing huge just looking to get some vegetables maybe sell a few on our stand.

our soil is similar, we added compost and garden soil, tilled into the ground where our in-ground bed is. our raised beds are 1 part native soil, 1 part compost 2 parts top soil roughly, just scooping from each pile as they were filled.

 

[Sonny580]

With added soil and compost mixed in to a good depth, you should be o.k. A lot of triple 10 or 12 helps a bunch too! --- Better dirt mixed in should keep the clay from getting that hard.
If you had access to manure, that helps but takes tons of it. --- I use horse manure here from a guy a mile down the road. They stable 4 or5 horses year round so I get 6 or so big dump trailer loads every year. I either spread it on or compost some of it for a year or two, then plow it under. This makes for REAL onions! lol! --- They get their ole roots in that and make stems like your arm and bigger than softball onions.

 

[chas0218]

Hi chas,

It make take several years to get some better soil.......that is if you buy/mix that load of top soil and then keep adding any compost that you can come up with.....e.g. composted leaves etc. as mentioned above......then there may be some horse or sheep manure that a neighbor would like to get rid of. I would think that after a couple years you would be pleased with the results. IIRC.. I even added some sand to mine. I used a walk behind tiller for years, and still do some times. Then there is lot of hand hoeing that keep the dirt/weeds loosened up. :2cents:

Right now I'm nursing a sudden back pain....even bought a brace yesterday....maybe that'll help. Real muddy here right now anyway.

Cheers,
Mike

Compost right now consists of of straw and our chickens' waste. We have been adding some sand used for sand bags and tilling that in. We use black plastic around the Zuch, Squash, Tomato plants it really seems to help retain moisture and keeps all the weeds down. On the beans or corn we usually use a tiller and go between rows then weed by hand until the stalks are tall enough where the weeds won't cover it up. We have a bunch of weeds but not much in terms of grass. I might cover plant next year to rye grass in the fall and till before planting in the spring.

 

[DJ54]

Hello Sonny..!! Imagine me finding you here too, LOL... Hope you don't mind if I join in the conversations here also. Seems a person can always learn something, and hopefully I can contribute some ideas here also.

I'm loving seeing the comments on using composts. I've been using leaves here for mulch around mostly tomato, and set plants here for 6-8 years for weed suppression. And, up until 3 years ago, plowed it down to add organic matter to the soil, although some parts were pretty high in it anyway. Sure made improvements to the upper part, that had a lot of clay. Just several years of plowing down the broken down leaves has made a big difference. Last year, I decided to leave the broken down leaf mulch, which pretty much turned to compost over the year, and plant down through it, using my Brinly planter. The compost residue left was aprox. 2" thick. It worked very well, and the Pea's and Beans were very healthy, and produced way more than I could use.

Due to the high amounts of rain we've gotten the lat 2 years, I did have some weed pressure, do to weed seed taking root that had came in from the outside edges of the garden, but were taken out with the rear tine tiller, just tilling 1" deep. Get them when they are just emerging, and they are a lot easier to kill.

I also learned more than several years back , that under that composted material, there are literally thousands of red worms, and night crawlers thriving under there. A win-win in the garden, with aeration, and all of those worm castings adding nutrients. Plus the fact of giving the good microbes a happy place to live, and thrive. I've also made the easy version of compost tea, putting composted leaves in a pillow case, and soaking it in a 35 gal. trash can of water, for 3 days,and it's ready. Just dunk it up and down every morning for 2-3 days depending on when you start it. Then apply the 3rd evening.

The other picture is of the tomato patch from 2018, and it was a bad year,due to all of the rain we had. Yet, the leaf mulch pretty much kept the weed pressure to "0". I could stroll through there every 3-4 days with the hoe, and take out anything that may have come up. That is the same exact area, I'm planting in,with the Brinly, minus the tomato plant debris. I can't help but think leaving the leaf compost in place, is like watering with compost tea, every time it rains. I only used a low nutrient level organic fertilizer given to me by a neighbor who uses it in his lawn service to try, as a starter fertilizer. But, I've tested my garden soil every 3 years, and still only needs 1 lb. of N-P-K, per 1000 sq.ft., so I'm very fortunate. This is a portion of the family garden we've been gardening in since 1953.

I also mulch with grass taken from the lawn, and pretty much all that I keep mowed, and "harvest" it with a lawn vac. What you're seeing in the last picture is a $400.00 investment, I hope will last quite a few years. The key is to mow grass before it goes to seed. Bluegrass here seems to go to seed in 10-14 days, but mowing weekly, I don't have a problem. 4" of grass mulch will last about 6 weeks, before needing top dressed. A little work putting it around plants, sure saves me a lot of time, and labor hoeing/cultivating later. And in the last couple of years, found that with all of this rain, I can go out and pick, within an hour of a heavy rain. The heavy mat of leaf mulch will support me to walk across it, without sinking in, and I weigh 240 lbs.

Better quit for now, I have a tendency to get carried away, don't mean to...!!

 

[Sonny580]

Welcome DJ, ---feel free to join in here too. Ideas and what others do are always welcomed! There are a lot of people who won't share ideas!
Methods that work for some, won't work for others, but you can pick what works in your area and maybe get a few new ideas to try and see! --- I am still trying new ideas here from what others have said works for them.
For compost here its anything that will rot down! --- Biggest thing available to me is horse manure from a couple of horse owners not far from me, so that works for both them and me!

 

[EddieWalker]

We have 24 raised beds that are full of weeds right now. I've started spraying round up on the walkways and we're pulling weeds to get ready for planting. Usually we start planting around Easter. The plan this year is to focus on what we really need. The last couple of years we've wasted space on corn, gourds and melons, along with a dozen other plants that we didn't have any significant use for. My wife came up with a spaghetti sauce from what she grew that is the best that we've ever had. We ran out last month and haven't found anything at the store that comes close, so now we're just not going to have spaghetti until we can make our own sauce. We still have quite a bit of salsa left, so we're pretty good there. We also eat a lot of pickles, but our recipe is still being worked on. Squash grows fantastic here, and we eat it all the time, so we'll increase that too. If we can focus on what we actually use, we should be able to grow enough to last a full year. I also have room for another 48 raised beds, but watering is a bigger issue right now, so maybe this year I'll get that all sorted out. I'm leaning towards putting a pump in my big pond and using that for the garden.

 

[herm0016]

It's currently snowing. Kitchen greenhouse will get planted this weekend

 

[ruffdog]

There are lots of articles about "over-tilling" your soil. I have backed off of my tilling as I was seeing the side effects.

Everything You Need To Know About Overtilling | TopTillers.com

 

[Sonny580]

I till a lot to keep a "dust mulch" between the rows,--since any other kind of mulch causes soggy ground and bugs, air cut off from roots, etc. I know a lot of you can mulch and get by with, I on the other hand can't. Thats when I tried the dust method, slows weeds down, ground can breathe and no bugs hiding.
A lot has to do with trying different methods to see what works for you.
I have 3 raised beds here that I set up 14 years ago, used a couple years and weeds took over them since.---couldn't carry enough water to make them work.
Probably be a couple weeks before I attempt to start a few plants. Main plant starting will be in the outdoor hotbed along the South side of the house. It seams to work good here for later plants.