T wrote:
songbird wrote:
T wrote:
...
I mean, an axe! I just wanted to dig some holes!

when it gets too dry here and i have to dig in the
areas with clay that i haven't amended yet, i can jump
up in the air and come down on the shovel and barely
make a dent in the soil.

in the areas i've worked in leaves, wood chips,
ashes and have planted things like winter rye it
works much better.

have you tried planting winter rye in the early fall?
(the grain, not the grass seed)

What would be the benefit? I had thought of buckwheat to
attract pollinators and squash bug parasite, but there
is an allergy to buckwheat in my wife's family as she
is afraid of it.

winter rye (the grain) is not buckwheat (but buckwheat is
an excellent cover crop because it does grow very fast and
has large leaves). winter rye puts down very fine roots
which help break up hard soils. the time i planted it here
in a few of the heavy clay soil gardens when i turned it
in the spring it was like shoveling through butter in
comparison to what i usually had to work through. i would
do it again each fall if i could.


Oh but the weeds no long laugh at me now that they are going down
the holes. Now which one of you is the biggest!

exactly! free stuff from mother nature, harvested
sun energy, minerals, nutrients, all worm food and
more plant food.

As I kept throwing weeds down the holes, your words kept going
through my head: "Free organic matter". Some of these weeds
are like a big dandelion, but with five times the leaves.
I had to squash them down with my shovel!

i remove any tops that have seeds before burying
but they certainly do help over the long run.


I do love the way this peat moss feels in my hands. Goodness
I have tried almost everything else, including organic compost.

keep scrounging all the organic materials you can.
makes things much easier in time, concentrate them
to help keep them moist (for an arid climate).

i had some friends drop off wood that is rotting that
they can't burn. i don't use it in gardens, but along
edges to help smother things (put down a few layers of
cardboard and then hold the cardboard down with the wood
chunks). eventually the raccoons and other critters will
break all that down. any humus is good humus.

I keep a couple of paper bags in the garage with all
the plant discards from the kitchen. But, so far,
the weeds are so prolific, I hadn't had to use them.

worm compost them in buckets, that stuff is
gold!


....
Boy the weeds sure have a new attitude. No more making
fun of me. No more singing when it rains. Now they say
"I am not a weed! He is a weed. Milk weed. Tumble weed.
His name is Noxious! Noxious weed! NOOOOOOOOOOO!" No
loyalty among weeds, I guess.

Thank you for all the help!

y.w.


Anthropomorphize? What me? Okay it might have been
the wind. (No, I can't pronounce it.)

ha...

oh, the other way to get topsoil is to truck it in.
around here topsoil runs anywhere from $10-35/cu yd
not including delivery fee ($10-100/load depending upon
how well you know someone ). that's really the
easiest way to get decent topsoil for a garden if
your property is poor (from then on all you have to
do is to keep it balanced or improve it even more).

we had some topsoil brought in when they built this
place for the front yard where the septic drain field
is at. to cover it. this is why we have any topsoil
at all. otherwise it would be all sand (fill) and
clay (the subsoil that was here left from farming).

by all rights, they should not have even built here.
and if they'd known they were going to garden so much
they should have built up the back yard where the
gardens are at so there wouldn't be so much work. now
i can't truck stuff in easily, but back then they
could have brought in another 30 truckloads for a few
thousand, but that would have alleviated many many
hours on my part of fixing a rather broken situation...

ah, well, ... it's always a recommendation of mine
to get the layout figured out and the water flows set
up before doing anything else with a landscape. just
observing for a while during rains and seeing what
needs to be done. saves a ton of headaches later.


songbird