On Wed, 26 Feb 2003 03:19:25 GMT, "Tim B"
wrote:



For anyone monitoring this thread who has a *smaller* garden, let me
recommend double digging. You can do about a 10x10 section every evening
until you're done. Basically you use a long handled round point shovel, dig
a trench one shovel depth deep, and lay the soil up on the ledge formed by
your digging. Then do it again.. This gets you down two shovel's distance.
Then take a step back and do it all over again. That will leave you with a
very good approximation of plowed ground. It works the soil deeper than a
tiller will. And it is terrific exercise, you won't need to go to the gym.


Both my husband and I have physical problems which prevent
us from doing this, unfortunately. And I shudder to think
of what it would cost to pay to have it done.

I'm going with the best substitute I can find though: we'll
have the garden tilled (as we did last year) and then I will
purchase THREE truckloads (pickup truckloads) of
spent-mushroom soil. I can purchase this fairly cheaply.

We'll have the spent-mushroom soil (which is wonderful
stuff, very similar to compost soil) dumped at the entrance
to the garden, and then rake it into wide raised beds.

We'll also use the spent-mushroom soil for the container
garden (as we did last year: everything we grew in it did
extremely well).

This will be almost as good, I think. I wouldn't bother
with this if we had 'normal' soil but we have very, very
heavy dense clay that is very hard to work, and tends to be
soggy and wet all the time.

Pat
--
Pat Meadows
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