Category — Garden Dirt
Garden Dirt – Dealing with Dirt Clods
Deb asked a very important question, about how to get you garden ready for planting, what to do with those nasty dirt clods. First, I think of clods as signals to your that your garden dirt needs something different.
Clods happen often in heavy clay soil. Clay soil can be great for growing plants because it contains lots of nutrients, but it’s also very heavy, making it difficult for the roots of your garden plants to penetrate. There are various solutions for this, but adding large amounts of organic matter to your garden beds has always worked for me. I like getting loads of old horse manure and then mixing a thick layer into my soil a few weeks before planting. You will get some grass seeds mixed into your soil when doing this, but I find that those weeds are easily pulled when they are small.
The most important thing to remember about dirt clods is that you shouldn’t be digging up your soil when it is too wet. I learned this from John Jeavons’ classic book, How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits. This is the book to buy if you are gardening in a small area and want to grow a lot of food for yourself. Jeavons’ recommends “double digging” your soil. This deeply loosens your soil and adds a ton of nutrients to create super fertile soil. Once that is done you can plant your vegetables much closer together than the standard recommendations and still expect each plant to produce well. The result is a ton of produce is a tiny area. I don’t always do this, but if I had the energy and a very small garden it would be the best way to grow a lot in a small area.
As Jeavons’ explains, if you dig while you soil is too wet you will break down it’s delicate structure and compact it, resulting in clogs. Think of your garden dirt as a cake; It has a crumb with a mixture of tiny rocks and bubbles of air and water. You don’t want to dig right after a rain, wait at least a couple of days. If you start digging and the soil sticks in big clumps to your shovel you know the soil is still too wet. Don’t dig when your soil is bone dry either. In California’s Central Valley where I use to garden, dry soil was like cement, making it impossible to dig. Even if you soil isn’t so heavy, you shouldn’t dig when it’s too dry because you will compact the soil and dry soil turns into dust and blows away very easily. They say it takes 1000 years to create one inch of good topsoil, so you don’t want any of that good stuff to blow away.
Sometimes I don’t dig or turn my soil at all, but rather clear away the weeds, mulch the soil with organic matter, and plant straight into that. If you want more information about planting a garden without having to dig and turn your soil, I would recommend Lasagna Gardening, by Patricia Lanza. Either way, it’s worth it to invest time and effort into preparing your soil before you plant. A little extra effort at the beginning will save a lot of effort and produce stronger healthier garden for you all year long.
February 19, 2009 No Comments
Garden Dirt- Preparing your Garden Soil for Spring
One task you should be thinking about in your fall garden is preparing your sustainable landscape now for spring planting. There are lots of different ways to prepare your garden dirt for spring planting from double digging to lasagna gardening. If you prepare your garden beds now then you can plant earlier in the spring, when the dirt is still too cold and wet to dig.
October 15, 2008 2 Comments
Cheap Alternatives to Expensive Mulch
The Portland Tribune reports that Bark dust prices bite gardeners.
“Bark dust — the landscaper’s finish coat — is now selling for roughly $232 per unit (which is 7.4 yards, or about two and a half pickup loads), up 62 percent from last spring.Bark, a byproduct of lumber milling, is in short supply because of the dramatic housing slump. Reduced demand for lumber translates to idle mills and less bark.”
Luckily there are lots of cheap alternative to buying bark. In Sacramento SMUD, the local power company collects all the trimmings from their work keeping power lines safe and supplies gardeners with free wood chips.
Even if your city doesn’t produce anything similar you can call local tree trimmers and ask them if they have an extra load wood chips they would like to get rid of. Often it cost them to get rid of the stuff so you are doing them a favor. You might think you don’t need an entire truck load of wood chips, but a thick layer of mulch is the best thing you can do for your garden. It keeps your soil cool and moist during these long Western summers.
Compost, either homemade or municipal is another great alternative. Davis, my home town offers free compost, made from local green waste twice a year. Residents have to shovel and transport the stuff back to their own gardens, but with a little planning local gardeners are able to get a few large bags or a trunk full each April and October.
If you live in San Francisco, then you can participate in their groundbreaking municipal composting program. Residents and restaurants compost food and yard waste and it all gets processed in a huge facility near Vacaville. The resulting compost can only be bought from Jepson Prairie Organics if you are a wholesaler. Technorati Tags: gardening, gardens, composting, compost
June 30, 2008 No Comments
