Bee~ Journal of then...

[Beekissed]

Free, I think my garden might just be a little bigger than yours.....

The rows are 35 ft. x 4 ft. and there are 12 rows now. 1680 sq. ft. of soil to turn by hand. I like the way yer thinkin' and it would give them something to do, but.....I'd really like to have the soil worked up a little more fine than the boys would do it.

 

[Farmfresh]

I would dig a little hole and pop in the taters - then simply mulch the dickens out everything. They should grow even without the tilling. Taters can push down through some pretty tight soil.

About the hound - Well mulching won't work with him.

 

[Farmfresh]

Free also has the right idea with the chickens.

I pen my chickens up in my backyard garden spot all winter long. When I first put them on it I add a deep layer of straw. Right now it looks like it has already been tilled once. Everything is nice and chopped up with the tiny old pieces of straw. I usually plant some special tomatoes, squash, and other things I am testing in this patch. I usually just dig little holes and add more mulch. I guess I am a REALLY lazy gardener, but it usually works out great.

 

[Beekissed]

I would dig a little hole and pop in the taters - then simply mulch the dickens out everything. They should grow even without the tilling. Taters can push down through some pretty tight soil.

About the hound - Well mulching won't work with him.

Well, last year my soil wasn't tilled deeply enough and my potato yield was little. What I did have grew near the surface and was exposed to the sun, turning them green as emeralds~even with mulching. This year I want some deep, fine soil...and even then I plan to hoe out a trench for the taters and hill very high once they are up. I want a high yield this year for storing, sharing and selling.

If you only want a few taters, tight soil might get it. If you want loads of taters, loose and deep is best.

Free also has the right idea with the chickens.

FF, my chickens free range over that garden each day and have scratched it to a fair-thee-well....but I still need to till this year to get the soil that I'm needing for the amount of planting that I'm doing.

I had originally wanted to do no-till gardening but concluded that my garden was too big to do this without a source of really good mulch and compost. If I had a smaller garden, I would definitely do no-till gardening.

 

[freemotion]

Free, I think my garden might just be a little bigger than yours.....

The rows are 35 ft. x 4 ft. and there are 12 rows now. 1680 sq. ft. of soil to turn by hand. I like the way yer thinkin' and it would give them something to do, but.....I'd really like to have the soil worked up a little more fine than the boys would do it.

Just did a little calculation in my head, and nope, I would have to measure, but I think we have at least the same, I might even have a tiny bit more....but it is amazing how much work the chickens do! Industrious little buggers, especially when worms are involved. All of my girls have access to about a third of my gardens until I close the gates, and I use the little chicken tractor in the front yard with two hens, who, when their efforts are so concentrated, till even more deeply than the whole crew does.

My richer garden, the one right next to the compost pile, is their favorite. It has the most worms, too, since I can just toss the compost over the fence, so it tends to get more than it's share of the brown gold. They also know that compost attracts worms, and I just put it on top, and they till it in for me. And make more eggs, too.

If I had a pig, though, it would be electonetted in each garden for a truly deep tilling!

 

[freemotion]

You probably.....most likely.....have very different soil than I do here. Mine is very sandy, and I add lots and lots of compost, it tends not to compact much. When we had trenches dug to wire the barn, they kept collapsing. The sand is quite deep. Must've been under water millenia ago!

 

[Beekissed]

I have a mix of sand, loam and clay but more clay,as the fellow who did the original plowing last year did it too deeply and turned the soil over to reveal the clay and covered my good topsoil! I asked him to not plow deeply but he is an old man and that is how they did it back in the old days.

Last year was the first time this soil has ever been turned over. I can't afford to buy compost or mulch, so I did the best I could last year with wood chips and mulch hay. I don't have leaves here and my lawn doesn't produce enough grass clippings for the whole garden.

This year I will try to get the local lawncare guys to dump at my place.

If I could have sown a cover crop or even covered the ground with some type of mulch, it would probably have made my soil more workable.

 

[Farmfresh]

The clay explains it then. That makes it EXTREMELY hard to grow down into.

My big garden has 50 foot rows, (12 of them, but 4 of those rows are berries- both black and rasp) plus a 10 X 50 foot open patch where I grow sweet corn or peas and taters and a couple of 8 X 8 strawberry patches.

My rows are permanent with posts and 4 inch mesh fencing strung on the veggie rows. The old guy I "inherited" the space from grew almost everything up! I have been opening up the garden slowly by removing some of the fences, but I still have 8 of those veggie rows left. I tilled all of that by hand until last summer alone. Since I just tilled the actual row (like having individual beds under and around the fencing) it was not to hard. I never till the part I walked on just more mulch. Also, this garden has been spaded for years and is mostly loam, so most of the digging is easy. Even so I just dug a little each day.

Last summer I finally got a little tiller. It is a little Troy-bilt cultivator. I like it cause it is easy to handle with my arthritis.

Try to get as much mulch and organics into that clay as possible Bee. It will help you all around.

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

Easter Sunday is when we will be planting our taters. We plant our taters on the 100th day of the year...there's a reason to it but I just can't remember. Amish man told DH about it...tried it last year...best potato yield we ever had! DH didn't plant them that deep, but as they grew, he hilled the dirt up around them last year.

We planted 5 pounds of red pontiacs and 5 pounds of Idaho potatoes....I didn't buy potatoes all winter!

 

[Beekissed]

Eventually, I hope to have this soil so fine from adding things that I can just use a spading fork to loosen it for the plants. I really want to move towards little or no tillage.

Last year this was nothing but packed down yard that we walked and drove over all the time....before that it was a pasture field.

For now? I need a tiller! Due to my wonderful chickens and not having a fence around the garden to keep them out, all the mulch I put on last year to keep the soil from packing down and keep it soft was scratched away. I couldn't even sow a ground cover last year because of those demons!

This year everything changes.....