Just moved to my new homestead and have questions

danielkleach said:

....... Not long after we moved in I walked around the cleared portion of the property (near the house) using the "Seek" app to identify any potential vegetable/fruit leftovers from the previous owner. It seems there are a few things they left behind including:

• red raspberries
• cutleaf blackberries
• muscadines
• kiwis (previous owner said they had a female plant when they bought the property, and they added a male nearby but no there was no fruit yet)
• soap aloe
• apple/peach trees (previous owner said these didn't really fruit last season, but didn't say how old they were)

Is there anything I should or need to do for the existing bushes/vines/etc in order for them to do better this coming season? .............

Click to expand...

Hi Daniel, welcome to HT. You've gotten a lot of great advice so I'm just going to throw in my 2 cents worth about the garden soil, and also ask a question about the muscadine vines you mentioned.

Your sandy soil looks nice and clean but it definitely does need to have LOTS of composted organic material mixed into it including very well rotted horse manure - that stuff is worth its weight in gold. So after you get rid of the existing weeds and roots in the garden area I'd suggest you bring in a pickup load and mix it in to get your soil ready before you start planting anything in there. Try to find your starter compost & horse manure from somebody local. Avoid woody compost unless the woody bits are well rotted and crumbly.

I'm also recommending that when you start making your own compost that you do not make it in bins (that is for city folks living on small lots) but make compost piles that are started in direct contact with the earth. It's a lot healthier for the compost that way and a bonus is that being in contact with the earth means that it will attract earthworms to the piles and earthworms are worth their weight in gold too.

If you think you may be interested in boosting the soil with compost tea and/or inoculating the soil with mycelium (recommended) around the fruit trees and the coniferous trees at a later date you may find this following information helpful:


With regard to the muscadine grape vines you identified I'm curious about if they had been planted and cultivated and controlled by previous owner(s) or if they are just growing wild all willy-nilly in various places around the property. In the event they are uncontrolled wild muscadines growing wherever they please around your trees then you should read this thread below which was recently posted about in the Plant Identification forum, just so you will know what you could be faced with:


Good luck to you and your family as you start out on your exciting new homesteading adventure in your lives.



.

Paumon said:

Your sandy soil looks nice and clean but it definitely does need to have LOTS of composted organic material mixed into it including very well rotted horse manure - that stuff is worth its weight in gold. So after you get rid of the existing weeds and roots in the garden area I'd suggest you bring in a pickup load and mix it in to get your soil ready before you start planting anything in there. Try to find your starter compost & horse manure from somebody local. Avoid woody compost unless the woody bits are well rotted and crumbly.

I'm also recommending that when you start making your own compost that you do not make it in bins (that is for city folks living on small lots) but make compost piles that are started in direct contact with the earth. It's a lot healthier for the compost that way and a bonus is that being in contact with the earth means that it will attract earthworms to the piles and earthworms are worth their weight in gold too.

With regard to the muscadine grape vines you identified I'm curious about if they had been planted and cultivated and controlled by previous owner(s) or if they are just growing wild all willy-nilly in various places around the property.

Click to expand...

I will definitely be amending the soil after I get the weeds taken care of. I will also be starting a compost pile very soon, just trying to decide where to put it. There is currently only one open spot just outside of the garden to place it, but that area already has a campfire hangout setup.

The muscadines seem to be contained in one dedicated area away from everything else, and away from the garden. They have it growing up a "closeline" looking setup, with nothing else close enough to get latched onto. I will see if I can get a photo before daylight is gone, but sunset is already here lol.

Here is an updated photo of the garden area after I did a bit more work on it today. The previous owners seemed to have had a burn area in the center of it. There are lots of burnt wood pieces in there. There's still plenty of work to do clearing it out, but it's getting there.

Orchardsmith said:

At my house, every plant has a name, too, including the weeds. BTW, what are tares in the Bible? And what do you use poison ivy for?

Click to expand...

Tares? I found this:

Poison ivy berries are food to some 30 species of birds... plus other wildlife:

Not "weeds"
Volunteer plants.

Sometimes someone will trot out the hoary expression about a plant in the "wrong place".

Personally... I think that is mono-culture thinking, and the sooner we all get away from such beliefs... the better.

I believe in plant communities.

Any of our food plants originally was found in a wild plant community... growing among other plants shouldn't be a problem.

When we grow a mono-culture, our crops are susceptible to being wiped out by specific insects, viruses, larger animals.

In community, those problems are much reduced.

Don't get me wrong... I do practice some triage... removing some plants in favor of others... air flow is important... I'm just not obsessive about it... there's so much good that the naturals do for us if we allow it to happen...

Whether it's in being host plants to the local butterfly population, or giving bugs something else to eat, or helping to keep the native pollinators around or just diffusing the stands of whatever so that the problem creatures don't find our designated plantings... those other plants have value.

Hmmm...
What's wrong with planting a cover crop cocktail... and forgetting about the tarp?
A cover crop will improve the soil, that tarp won't do anything.



Here's some of that red clay...
Best soil in the area...

Was working this yesterday...
Scoop up the turf... then stand on shovel and rock...

People complain about how hard these clay hills are to dig... but that's just from the traffic...
They say that you put heavy equipment on the soil, and it will recover... around the next ice age!

Where you are on the piedmont, I'd walk that 27 acres with a shovel and see what other types of soil you have...

I'll guarantee... you do a side by side planting in the red clay vs the sand... you'll believe!

There are some things that the sand is better for...
onions, carrots, rosemary...

But... most stuff? That red clay is the stuff.

You're pretty close to Athens... might be worth visiting the college of agriculture there... or seeing the test plantings there, maybe talk to the extension agent...

A lot of people that post online suggest stuff they heard somewhere... and... I run into the same thing in garden books... people write stuff they read in a earlier published book... but haven't actually tested the truth of these things out in the field.

danielkleach said:

Would it be better to add a layer of compost to the soil prior to tarping it, or just before planting? I've read conflicting advice on this.

Click to expand...

It's going to depend on your circumstances and your needs. If you're tarping to solarize and kill WEEDS, then adding the compost can come any time. If you have huge quantities of compost, then add when it's convenient. If you have very limited quantities of compost, you might want to side dress with it when new plants are emerging. I like to spread rotted manure around because I have quite a bit of it, but keep some well-rotted stuff handy to make manure tea for side dressing. Perhaps when you're going to be removing the covers it will be rainy. In that case it might make more sense to spread the compost out when it's drier. My main concern with putting on compost is that it work when plants need it. I don't want heavy rain to leach out the nutrients before the plants can use them. The covers should prevent leaching, so that's another reason why putting on the compost should be a question of your convenience. What ever you do, note the dates and note the results along with rainfall, etc., in your garden journal. Next year you can look back to see what you did and when. Good luck on this.