Improving Garden soil

Low areas like that do tend to have rich soil due to having received it as runoff from surrounding areas. Since it already is known to be fertile, all that's needed now is to improve the structure. Changing if from what it is to loam is impossible so the next best is to improve the friability. That can be done with a lot of carbon material which will take awhile to break down and remain as humus. When tilled in with normal equipment to 6 or 8 inches, that would eliminate the present situation where the soil becomes hard just below the surface.

Martin

I’m going to guess that the soil was built up from runoff into the low spot… Silt, that is light, floaty, and left behind heavier sand and minerals when it got washed away. Saturated silt is like pudding. Moist you can shape it like putty. And when dry it’s hard and cracks… just like a dried up dirt pond. I bet it stinks too, anaerobic, grains are too tight to let air in.

How about a goat farm that uses wood shavings? Would that help?

__________________
Trish

Seriously, I am COMPLETELY dressed!

Just keep moving...just keep moving!

You cannot spread/put chicken litter within 50 feet of water, ie, ponds, springs , creeks etc.
Doing so causes algae to form, can kill pond life or cause undesirable conditions. This is a law. While I am not in favor of laws involving my own property , this one makes sense and I have seen what happens when chicken litter gets in ponds. I would not want it in my garden either as the litter can be a major source of weeds and if it is hot litter will burn up your plants. It should be composted first anyway you use it

That would help but would take an awful lot of it. An acre is 43,560 square feet. One would need about 2" of it to make much difference. If my math is correct, that would require 7,260 square feet of material or 269 cubic yards.

Martin

"Raised beds in another area may be your answer. "

You will raise more in 1/4 acre of intensively managed raised beds than in a full acre of row garden.

As an example, Eliot Coleman author of "The Winter Harvest Handbook" intensively farms commercially a TOTAL of 1 1/2 acres of raised beds in Winter Harbor Maine. He supplies numerous restaurants and grocers with fresh produce 12 months a year.

Read the information on Square Foot Gardening and Lasagne Gardening to see just how much produce can be raised in small areas of intensely managed raised beds. We provide most all of our fresh veggies year round in Texas in three 4x22 raised beds and two 4x60 raised beds. We will expand next year to another three 4x22 beds. That gives us approx 1000 sf of beds, but 1000 sf is less than 1/43rd of an acre. Its much easier to provide soil amendments for 1000 sf than 43,560 sf.

Sounds as if you might have a fair amount of clay in your soil. That's not necessarily bad - you need it to retain water, and you are using the water you've got and might regret it if you didn't have it.
Here http://www.lawnexperts.co.uk/five-mi...soil-type.html is a quick five-minute test you can do to find out what soil type you've got.
If you change your soil, you might not have water for the garden any longer.

Hmmm, I bet I could do that in horse manure and wood shavings...definately take a lot of goats though! lol

__________________
Trish

Seriously, I am COMPLETELY dressed!

Just keep moving...just keep moving!

My recommendation - go make a pot of coffee and read the "Extreme Composting" thread that's stickied on this forum.

__________________
Uncle Dutch Farms
Blogging from working city mom to homesteading housewife.
Rural Living Today
Encouragement for the Urban-to-Rural Transition
My review of the Piteba oil expeller

Green organic would only not work in soils with poor microbial activity, right? Such as those disturbed by chemicals.

__________________
I'm an environmentalist, left wing, Ron Paul loving Prius driver with a farm. If you have a problem with that, kindly go take a leap.

To me it sounds like silt/sand loam. Basically you can have whipped cream when wet and concrete when dry.

First I would do a simple soil test to see the exact mature of your soil.

Take a quart mason jar with lid. fill it with about a pint of your average soil.
Put a tea spoon of automatic dish washing liquid or laundry detergent. Fill the jar with water. Shake it vigorously for at least three minutes. Have a marker ready.
How to mark the jar.
after 1 min mark the level of the stuff on the bottom.
This is the sand.

after 6 hours mark the jar again.
this is the silt.

After 24-48 hours mark the jar the last time. This is the clay. The clay is lighter in color than the silt. It will be obvious. The water may never clear.

You will get a good general idea of the composition of your soil.

use this chart to define your soil type.







If you have silt/sand loam like I do. My soil is 45% sand, 45% silt, 10% clay. You just add manure. It will do wonders. You can even move up hill and the soil will produce like never before. I need to add about 3-5 inches of manure. I use it like mulch in that I just put it on top. It fertilises and keeps the soil moist and loose rather than the hard pan it wants to be.


P.S. use your soil to your advantage. Don't add manure to your foot paths. It will get as hard as concrete. No weeds.

No green manure in silt based soils does nothing. Green manure tends to loosen soil and add bulk. However this soil already drains and has bulk. You need to help retain the soils moisture and add things that physically loosen it. Like manure with lots bedding, wood chips, leaves, or peat moss.

I have silty clay, and let me tell you mulch is your lifesaver. Wood mulch, especially. Where ever I've been adding wood mulch annually (like under my fruit trees/mini orchard) where I did not add any kind of admendments, the soil on top has become nice, friable, dark and easily worked by hand. It's like that anywere in my yard where I've been added layers of mulch for the past 5 years.

__________________
It's not that I don't like mankind, I just like nature a whole lot more.

If you have a local dump that gives away mulch, go for it. Assuming there is nothing structurally wrong, like you are in a low area that is serving as a drain to the rest of your property, it will take at least 10 tons of carbonaceous material to get your acre in reasonable shape. Then each year after that, 5 tons should get the job done but more would be better.

To give some history on this garden spot--------My Grandfather used this same spot every year that I can remember for his tobacco plants. This was back in the 1950's and 60's. I remember him bogging the tractor many of times getting the plant bed prepared. See this spot is always wet during the early part of the year because of winter rain setteling in the low place in the woods. My mother said they planted their garden in this spot back in the 1950's and 60's. Once the tobacco plants were pulled and set, they would disk in what was left and plant a garden every year. I made me a garden spot 10 years ago on the other side of the field which is higher. I put in a sprinkler system using a gas farm pump pulling water out of a creek close to the garden but the creek is about 8ft below that garden spot. I spent a fair amout of money each garden season in gas pumping water to this garden and it grew decent. I was talking to my mother and she said I should plant the low area like they did years ago so I would not have to water it. The first year I planted it I had the best garden I have ever had, But we got some rain often enough to keep a little in the low place in the woods. It stayed damp but not enough to make it boggy. I think this is my 5th year of planting in that spot.

I work this garden with my tractor and do very little by hand. The rows are about 53" apart. I disk it, lay the rows off with cultivators, plant most of it with a Garden Way planter then when it is growing I run the cultivators through it every week to keep down the weeds until the plants get to tall for the tractor to drive over. The way I cultivate it I do not have to use a hoe "alot". I use a stirup hoe real close to the plants and between them. If it gets weedy after it gets to tall for the tractor I have a rear tine garden till that I run between the rows.

When some of you talk about just putting the compost, leaves etc on top of the dirt thats there and not turn it in-------I just do not see how I could use my equipment to work the rows etc. It seems I would have to do more work by hand. Working around a acre by hand sounds very much like to much work---LOL.

I can spend a few hundred dollars with a track hoe and fix the low spot in the wood where it will not hold water period. Even if I did this and put in a dam where I could control the amount of water I let stay in the low spot, I feel if I Drained some of the water off so it would dry out enough that I could work it with out being boggy, I feel this would cause the garden to get to dry when the plants need the moisture the worse if it does not rain.

I feel I am going to start adding alot of leaves, wood chips etc over the next several years and it should help alot. Thanks

I will try this!! Thanks!!

Ah, yes, of course different soils will have different nutritional needs and physical differences... I guess that hadn't sank in yet.

__________________
I'm an environmentalist, left wing, Ron Paul loving Prius driver with a farm. If you have a problem with that, kindly go take a leap.

I see your issue with needing to use the equipment. My garden is much smaller than yours. It's about 80 x 40. With your issues I would try to just till where the plants are actually going. I do this. Basically I put the mulch over the whole garden. Then using just two of the tines on my four tine tiller I cut the seed bed only about 10" wide or so. Then in between the crop rows manure/mulch keeps the ground almost too wet for sprouting and covered to block the sun light from the soil. Weeding is never really an issue if the mulch is deep enough.

I will say that with your rows so wide apart due to your machine needs. You could cut the area in half or maybe even by a 3rd and plant the rows closer and do the work by hand if you have a loam soil. I can plant rows as close to near touching and have no issue with on going fertility. I can plant sweet corn rows at 18"x 3" a part. I can plant root crops in a mass planting meaning wide rows 24" filled like grass if you get my meaning thinned to 2" for carrots, 4 for beets. Potatoes are planted on 2 ft centers 10" apart. The wide row room is needed for the hilling soil. Summer Squash are planted 5 to a hill on 3 foot centers. Tomatoes are planted in 18" rows 12" apart.


I guess what I'm trying to say is your using a lot of room, water, fertilizer, and energy to get your production. You could go smaller and produce more for less. It will also let you really concentrate on your soil, plant needs, and IMHO your production will be greatly increased.

I tried planting the rows closer. At 53" if I plant two rows of dixie lea peas side by side you can not see any dirt between the rows when they get grown, so I do not feel I should plant them any closer. Planting butter beans any closer makes it hard when you have to pick them. I planted the corn 26 1/2 inches and it done good, but that means I have to reset-up the equipment to plant it, so I just plant it 53" so I do not have to change anything.

What I do is decide how much we want to plant, which decides how big of a garden I am going to prepare, sometimes a 1/2 acre, some times 1 1/2acre etc. I disk the whole plot a couple times, then lay off the rows and plant--adding more rows as it gets time to plant different things.

I know you can get MORE per sq ft in a smaller well prepaired area/garden, but the smaller garden requires more work per sqft too. I bet in my almost 1 acre garden this year so far I have less than 10 hours in prepairing, planting and hoeing it-----not counting any picking/harvesting. I am very happy with the way I am working it=========I guess my original post should have been worded different---------Maybe I should have asked----how to improve my garden soil that I work with my tractor and equipment? I do have more time now to put in a garden than I have in the past, but I still have alot of other interest that I put time in so I do not want to start working most of it by hand. Thanks Everyone

PS Stanb I got to run out now and mark my jar---its been 6 hours.

OK Stan help me here please. I did two test even though it has only been 6 hours into the test, both jars have setteled about 1/2 way up the quart jar so what clay there is in it will be little. I got 2 pint jars of my garden soil, jar 1 was collected in several spots just a few inches below the surface----jar 2 was collected in the lowest spot that is the last to dry and always the softest spot when its real wet. I dug down to about 12" which would be below where my equipment works.

Jar 1 after 1 minute setteled to 2 1/8", after 6 hours to 2 1/2"(3/8's of a inch of silt.

Jar 2 after 1 minute was 1 3/4" after 6 hours was 2 9/16. (13/16 of silt)

The sand layer favors salt and pepper mix and the silt layer looks like mud(grey color leaning towards a touch of tan)

So Far what do you think?? Thanks