Breaking ground on a new garden

[Western]

Chris, I forgot to mention, most years i will plant rye on my garden spot as a "cover crop" looks better through the winter and I till it in each Spring. Sure I have a few that seem to grow anyway, but easily weeded out if it's a problem.

I agree with guy's on adding biodegradable's to your garden too, even leaves from the yard every year if you rake them help the soil, each year your dirt will get richer. If you can get Cow manure, I'd prefer it over Horse, I have had less weed transfer with cow manure.( extra stomachs sure help with that) Chicken manure is probably the best you could luck into also.

I am also in the "midst" of re-locating my garden and this thread aint help'n:laughing: Spring fever:thumbsup:

 

[cmhyland]

Chris, I forgot to mention, most years i will plant rye on my garden spot as a "cover crop" looks better through the winter and I till it in each Spring. Sure I have a few that seem to grow anyway, but easily weeded out if it's a problem.

I agree with guy's on adding biodegradable's to your garden too, even leaves from the yard every year if you rake them help the soil, each year your dirt will get richer. If you can get Cow manure, I'd prefer it over Horse, I have had less weed transfer with cow manure.( extra stomachs sure help with that) Chicken manure is probably the best you could luck into also.

I am also in the "midst" of re-locating my garden and this thread aint help'n:laughing: Spring fever:thumbsup:

Thanks Dennis,

I have access to all the horse manure I want and it's composted well ( about 2 years at the bottom of the pile) from a horse farm across the street....

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Gunny]

Any composted manure is a lot better than none, so go for it! I remember several years ago we had a fellow that was being paid to haul chicken manure from a large poultry farm and he had a waiting list for people who wanted it spread. What a deal, getting paid on both ends of the transport!

I'd also keep an eye on the garden spot, more than likely you can get in earlier for the first pass, as long you don't till down into the wet soil.
Even if it is the end of March, you can get a few tillings in, letting things settle down between, before the planting season hits.

 

[Paddy]

CMHyland,

Not sure what kind of garden you have planned or what you want to grow. But here is a concept I have used with a friend. He had a home on a 2 ac lot. big back yard of nothing but lawn. He was going to have large plots tilled and have several big gardens. I suggested he take a completely different approach.

Don't till a big rectangle. Most of the garden is just weeds waiting to happen. Maybe why it's been 12 years sense the last garden? Leave the sod, it's your walking path with no mud and easy to mow. Each type of plant will be treated differently. Tomatoes for example; Say you want 30 tomato plants. Every 4 feet dig a 12 to 18" dia hole. mix in your soil treatment to create an ideal growing condition. You might even want to place a short pc of 4"x 16" perf pipe in the side of the hole to make watering easy to get down to the roots. Poke your tomato stake in and plant your tomato plant. Space your rows with a generous amount of room for your mower to comfortably fit. Alternate blowing the clippings left or right. During the dry times, just water down the 4" perf pipe and you are training the roots down, not to the surface as what happens with top watering.

We have done many vegies like this but taller plants work best. For green beans, we would just till a walk behind tiller's width, 24" by 50 feet?. Then plant two rows of beans. stagger your plantings and you will have fresh green beans all summer. Same as above, leaving the lawn between the rows with room for the mower.

Cucumbers, snow peas can be planted in a row with the outside tines removed from the tiller. Making a 12" tilled row. A few stakes and fencing and you have a nice neat row.

The nice thing about this method you don't have to wait as long to get in the spring to start working the ground. We planted snow peas in the same narrow strip for 10+ years with out ever taking down the fence. In early March the ground was still sloppy wet. We could walk on the lawn beside the rows and just poke in the seeds

There are some crops this will not work for, corn like to be in big blocks

Patrick T

 

[clemsonfor]

Good morning guys,
I'll be breaking ground on a new garden this year... most likely in early April.

The location is currently a field, but we did have a garden in the space 12 years ago.
My thought is measure the thickness of the sod mat and set the tiller for that depth. I'll run over the space
breaking up the sod, and use my landscape rake to rake it off.

Next step would be to till and make soil ammendments as needed.

Is there a better way to do this? I don't own a plow or harrows, so I'm trying to work with the tool I have.

Regards,
Chris

Spray it with glyphosate come spring wait til grass browns and then till then, and if you want spray the sprouts with glyphosate and then plant.

Glyphosate is the chemical in the product with the trade name Roundup. THis is as safe as stuff gets they use it in almost all commercial agriculture and this is how your corn and soybeans are produced with the exception that they actually spray over the top of those.

 

[clemsonfor]

CMHyland,

Not sure what kind of garden you have planned or what you want to grow. But here is a concept I have used with a friend. He had a home on a 2 ac lot. big back yard of nothing but lawn. He was going to have large plots tilled and have several big gardens. I suggested he take a completely different approach.

Don't till a big rectangle. Most of the garden is just weeds waiting to happen. Maybe why it's been 12 years sense the last garden? Leave the sod, it's your walking path with no mud and easy to mow. Each type of plant will be treated differently. Tomatoes for example; Say you want 30 tomato plants. Every 4 feet dig a 12 to 18" dia hole. mix in your soil treatment to create an ideal growing condition. You might even want to place a short pc of 4"x 16" perf pipe in the side of the hole to make watering easy to get down to the roots. Poke your tomato stake in and plant your tomato plant. Space your rows with a generous amount of room for your mower to comfortably fit. Alternate blowing the clippings left or right. During the dry times, just water down the 4" perf pipe and you are training the roots down, not to the surface as what happens with top watering.

We have done many vegies like this but taller plants work best. For green beans, we would just till a walk behind tiller's width, 24" by 50 feet?. Then plant two rows of beans. stagger your plantings and you will have fresh green beans all summer. Same as above, leaving the lawn between the rows with room for the mower.

Cucumbers, snow peas can be planted in a row with the outside tines removed from the tiller. Making a 12" tilled row. A few stakes and fencing and you have a nice neat row.

The nice thing about this method you don't have to wait as long to get in the spring to start working the ground. We planted snow peas in the same narrow strip for 10+ years with out ever taking down the fence. In early March the ground was still sloppy wet. We could walk on the lawn beside the rows and just poke in the seeds

There are some crops this will not work for, corn like to be in big blocks

Patrick T

I did this my first year here with a new garden as I was breaking hard ground and had a walk behind that I rented. It was terrible, other than the walking on grass. It looked terrible and without a bagging mower each time you mow you sling weed seeds into your "tilled garden area" they then sprout, also the grass edge creeps into the planting area as well, making you loose your area. Once the tomatoes and squash crawled into the grass you could not cut it and then you had knee high weeds inside your plants.

What I do now is till the whole area and then put out hay in the garden and plant in the hay. It keeps weeds down keeps soil moist and keeps you out of the mud and then breaks down and helps build the soil. And no you don't get more weeds than you have without doing anything. If the hay was cut before it seeded out really bad and it does not have lots of noxious weed seeds in it like the bail I got this last year that was filled with thisle (I dug those things all season long!!!). With out the hay I have a constant crop of grass in between my rows of stuff.

 

[Gunny]

Everybody has a way that they like better than the next guys way. Nothing wrong with that at all, just go with what you're comfortable with.

I make sure that my rear tine tiller will fit down each row (makes for a larger garden area, but remember, this is my way!) Tomatoes are planted two tiller widths wide.

Then at the first of the season, I just run the tiller through the rows about once a week, as the summer progresses, I can often go as long as two weeks between tilling passes, raising the tines to just stir up the top inch or so, it moves along real quick. Then it doesn't take long to walk through and hoe out any weeds between the plants, it actually feels good tending MY garden. By keeping each row to 50' long, it doesn't take long at all to get through a row and if I can't finish the whole garden that day, I just finish out the row I'm on, and come back the next day.
The only thing I mulch is pepper plants and I like to hill the dirt up on my tomato plants. Cucumbers and green beans grow up on a sections of fence wire. Melons I try to keep the vines trained as much as possible.

I water with two impact sprinklers spaced so that one good long pump running session waters the entire garden, striving to get an inch of water per week in the ground. Considering the hot dry summers we've had here for the last several years, I'm usually watering once a week!

In the fall, I run the tractor tiller through, then broadcast winter wheat for a cover crop, which I till under the next year. I also try to rotate garden spots on a somewhat regular basis as well as rotate vegetables within the garden so that I'm not planting the same thing in the same spot each year.

Like I said, that's my way, yours may and probably will differ

 

[cmhyland]

CMHyland,

Not sure what kind of garden you have planned or what you want to grow. But here is a concept I have used with a friend. He had a home on a 2 ac lot. big back yard of nothing but lawn. He was going to have large plots tilled and have several big gardens. I suggested he take a completely different approach.

Don't till a big rectangle. Most of the garden is just weeds waiting to happen. Maybe why it's been 12 years sense the last garden? Leave the sod, it's your walking path with no mud and easy to mow. Each type of plant will be treated differently. Tomatoes for example; Say you want 30 tomato plants. Every 4 feet dig a 12 to 18" dia hole. mix in your soil treatment to create an ideal growing condition. You might even want to place a short pc of 4"x 16" perf pipe in the side of the hole to make watering easy to get down to the roots. Poke your tomato stake in and plant your tomato plant. Space your rows with a generous amount of room for your mower to comfortably fit. Alternate blowing the clippings left or right. During the dry times, just water down the 4" perf pipe and you are training the roots down, not to the surface as what happens with top watering.

We have done many vegies like this but taller plants work best. For green beans, we would just till a walk behind tiller's width, 24" by 50 feet?. Then plant two rows of beans. stagger your plantings and you will have fresh green beans all summer. Same as above, leaving the lawn between the rows with room for the mower.

Cucumbers, snow peas can be planted in a row with the outside tines removed from the tiller. Making a 12" tilled row. A few stakes and fencing and you have a nice neat row.

The nice thing about this method you don't have to wait as long to get in the spring to start working the ground. We planted snow peas in the same narrow strip for 10+ years with out ever taking down the fence. In early March the ground was still sloppy wet. We could walk on the lawn beside the rows and just poke in the seeds

There are some crops this will not work for, corn like to be in big blocks

Patrick T

Thanks Patrick,
I think in my case as this is currently a field that I'd have to mow with a bagger around the plants to keep the weeds down. When I used to have a garden years ago we tilled the whole area. The 12 years since last garden came about because we bought a big boat and you can't do both things.... The boat sold lat November and I'm looking forward to getting back to normal...

Regards,
Chris

 

[cmhyland]

Everybody has a way that they like better than the next guys way. Nothing wrong with that at all, just go with what you're comfortable with.

I make sure that my rear tine tiller will fit down each row (makes for a larger garden area, but remember, this is my way!) Tomatoes are planted two tiller widths wide.

Then at the first of the season, I just run the tiller through the rows about once a week, as the summer progresses, I can often go as long as two weeks between tilling passes, raising the tines to just stir up the top inch or so, it moves along real quick. Then it doesn't take long to walk through and hoe out any weeds between the plants, it actually feels good tending MY garden. By keeping each row to 50' long, it doesn't take long at all to get through a row and if I can't finish the whole garden that day, I just finish out the row I'm on, and come back the next day.
The only thing I mulch is pepper plants and I like to hill the dirt up on my tomato plants. Cucumbers and green beans grow up on a sections of fence wire. Melons I try to keep the vines trained as much as possible.

I water with two impact sprinklers spaced so that one good long pump running session waters the entire garden, striving to get an inch of water per week in the ground. Considering the hot dry summers we've had here for the last several years, I'm usually watering once a week!

In the fall, I run the tractor tiller through, then broadcast winter wheat for a cover crop, which I till under the next year. I also try to rotate garden spots on a somewhat regular basis as well as rotate vegetables within the garden so that I'm not planting the same thing in the same spot each year.

Like I said, that's my way, yours may and probably will differ

Thanks Gunny,

Sprinklers????? We used to use the impact sprinklers on poles... That's a lot of water. I'm looking for another method.

If my rows are 100' I could lay in soaker hose, or buy a couple of 100' lengths of cheap hose at Walmart and pinhole it every 6 inches.

So I'd like to find a way to get more water to the roots and in the end use less water overall.

Regards,
Chris

 

[Gunny]

Thanks Gunny,

Sprinklers????? We used to use the impact sprinklers on poles... That's a lot of water. I'm looking for another method.

Like I said before, everybody has their own way! I thought about soaker hose, but that would involve taking them up when I wanted to till or hoe out and it would take a lot of soaker hose unless I did about half the garden, moved them and did the other half.

But then again, I'm not watering with city water either, I've got a fairly good sized pond less than 50' from the garden, and I already owned a 6HP water pump, so it was a no brainer for me. During the season, I just leave the pump and suction hose there by the pond. I doesn't take me more than 20 minutes to set the two sprinklers up (they're on tripods) and run 5/8" garden hose to them, then fire the pump up, grab a cold frosty something and watch my garden get watered!

I usually fire the pump up and after making sure everything is OK, I head for the garage, I can see the garden from there and hear the pump running. Most of the time, it takes a full tank of gasoline to get enough water down, so as long as I hear the pump running and can see the water spraying, I just let it run out of gas until the next time. That way I don't have to worry about this ethanol mix drying up and gumming the carburetor either.

I don't think a pump as big as mine would work very well with soaker hose and I don't want to buy a smaller pump, but in my case, the water is almost free, all I'm paying for is the gasoline. If I had to use city water, you can bet I'd be using soakers.

I've also seen people water their garden by the trench method - drag out a ditch with a garden hoe down every row, then flood the ditches until everything gets a good soaking.