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Oh my gosh, when we were first married we lived in a town with crows. They were huge and they worked together. about 4 or 5 would work on my trash can until they got it knocked over and open. they would then feast on any garbage in there and scater all the trash over the yard. I learned to hate them up until then I thought of the crows as cute things like heckle and jeckle. not after that. they can be very destructive.
Crabber, I have a tiller, but it sure has a tough time getting deep enough in this hard packed soil. I have dumped quite a few sacks of stuff in there. I put in peat moss, soil conditioner, a couple sacks of potting soil, a sack of organic cow manure and some cotten seed hulls. right now it's putting in a pretty good bed of weeds, that I will till under as soon as we get a nice day, then rake through to get the weed roots out. I've never had a lot of trouble getting things to grow, but this hard dirt is the pitts!!! Now I've got my little compost fence on one corner, and I save kitchen peelings, coffee and tea grounds crushed egg shells, shred leaves and dump those over it and more scraps. As soon as I've got most of the weed roots raked out, I'll spread the rest of the compost that I have saved and till it under again. It should be pretty ripe by the time I get out there in March or April to start putting my seeds in. My brother in law usually brings me several tomato plants to get started with them and if I see some pretty ones at a garden center, I pick up another few. Thanks for the tips on the different herbs to keep bugs out. I always have a few marigolds and have used your pepper spray, and have mint most years. Had some catmint come up a few years ago and it reseeds every year in my flowerbeds. Will move some of that to the outer edges as well. I have some asparagus growing on a fencepost that I want to move into the garden this year too. Another one growing in the front flower bed that I'll leave there. I also want to plant some dill,,,,,,also heard that it will deter bugs. I for sure want some basil, lavender, rosemary and will try again to get thyme to grow for me. Might be the climate but it always fizzles out on me.
Marie, at our last house, I had a truckload of sand brought in. I scattered that over the whole garden area and then tilled it in. I got baga and bags of oak leaves from a friend of mine and tilled those in also. Oak leaves are not the best though. I think they have a fair amount of tannic acid in them. Our soil is pretty acidic anyway because of all of the rain we get. I had a neighbor that was a retired North Dakota farmer that told my wife bringing in that sand was a terrible mistake, but it wasn't. It made the garden much easier to work and the drainage was much improved. In clay soils, root crops like carrots, parsnips, etc. don't do all that well, but they did well in my garden after adding that sand.
Randy, daddy used to put sand in the garden too. Back then we had a pasture with cows and horses in it and chickens too, so we always had plenty of manure. We'd go out and gather it in fall and he'd plow in under then, and then again a couple weeks before planting time with a harrow. Plenty of all sorts of kitchen scraps to save from mamas canning days, bean hulls, tomato peeling, cucumber, squash and whatever else, Plus he just plowed under last years crop to keep the ground softened up. I have so many trees that it's not hard to save leaves. Pecan, hackberry, chinaberry, golden rain trees, ash, Osage orange. I just mow them and then scrape a couple wheelbarrows full from time to time and dump them in my garden plot or over the compost I've saved. I just let this garden plot go for 3 years and it packed down again. dummy me. It's looking pretty good though. I have about 5 or 6 oaks, and try to scrape those leaves to a certain spot to save, mow and let them break down separate from the others because it takes longer for them to break down. I think they still work though, once they are aged, mixed in with all the other stuff I toss in there)
The oak leaves worked for me too, but they did take a little longer than others. I do have maple leaves available here and I use them sometime. But I have so much other stuff from the stalls that it's more of a problem using it all than it is to get some. I also take loads of it and put under the fruit trees in the orchard.
Marie,
Yep what Randy said ...Sand. It is one of the best for clay. But you would be surprised how a little compost can make a diff. Dill is a great herb but it will draw caterpillars especially for the swallow tails butterflies. I usually plant a sacrifical batch
Do the caterpillars stay with the dill or eat other plants as well? We used to have a good crop of dill every year because mom needed it for her pickles.
They usually eat the dill and stay with it. But they can wipe out a patch quick. I like to plant a lot. It's great to be able to let them eat and not kill them. They are pollinators too
Oak leaves work well as a soil amendment if allowed to decay a bit. As Randy says they do contain tannic acid, but this breaks down fairly rapidly with aging or composting. I like to chum them up goo with the mower and then pile them to work in with grass clippings in spring. That makes for a godd well balanced compost pile that composts rapidly.
Now to the topic of clay... about anything you can add helps..... except more clay. We have this clown on the raidio here who is supposed to be the world's authority on perennials and he kepps telling people that sand plus clay equals concrete and don't do it..... sometimes I want to call him and have it out about adding sand.... but I would probably get screened out..... he's not tolerant of dissent.
I have read a book on ammending clay soil. It said it was okay to add the sand unless.....but I can't remember what the unless was....duh!!! Guess I better head back to the library to get another look at that book. I do remember it said the best thing to do was to plant a cover crop and then just till it into the soil. To be continued after absent minded gardener returns to library to reread book.
The sand worked great for me. But then I also amended with lots of leaves. After several years of adding stuff to the clay soil, I had a good base for a garden.
We have a clay based soil for our garden and we often get a load of builder's sand to add gradually to the garden along with compost. When we first started with our garden years ago, I called it "The Rocks". Couldn't walk without shoes in the garden the ground was so lumpy and hard on my feet. 20+ years later I can walk in the garden without shoes and we still amend the soil to help keep the soil from being so compacted.
If you can get manure from a cheap source it is great mixed with sand as is any compostable material. I know it takes a lot to get clay to soil but unless you can afford to have top soil bought in for a raised bed you have to invest the work.
My daughter moved to Oklohoma in August and has been trying to grow 'Anything" She says the clay is so bad she is wanting to give up. I think I have her talked into going to containers.
Crabber, I was born in southern Oklahoma and it was mostly sandy soil, but it was really great for watermelons. My grandfather had a farm there but lost in during the depression for a mortgage of about $500. It sounds terrible but I think it may have been a blessing in disguise. My Mom and her three sisters were the field hands and by the time my grandfather lost the farm, two of the sisters had married and left. So the workload increased substantially and his health deteriorated likewise. But I remember walking around my uncles farm there and how much sand there was all over the place.
Crabber, I just remembered something else. My uncle's farm was on a high area known around there as the "Red Clay Hill". So from the name given, I would venture that there certainly was clay around. My older sister was born in that particular house when my folks lived there in 1932. I was born two years later in beautiful downtown Thackerville. It's one of those places where you can drive through the town in about 5 seconds doing the speed limit.
Treeman we have a clown here on the radio, I do not know how he landed his job!
I get so infuriated when I hear him say the absolute opposite of facts. And doesn’t know the answer when Powdery mildew is described on veggie leaves…he doesn’t know the correct answer to the simplest kindergarten questions. He just blaaaaaaas his way through the hours! Like a preschooler. I keep giving him a chance to say something right but he seems to fail every time..
I would be in great trouble if he ever heard what I was saying or thinking of him grrrr
**As far as tilling clay, hummm..depending on the clay and how deep etc.
here is what I found,
I found clay in several spots while digging to China.*lol
I do not think a tiller was going to do much with it!
Even my Wonderful little pal Mantis! I had to keep the hose running and work the clay for a good 45minutes as I scooped it into the wheelbarrow, it was harder to work with them cement and I have worked with various time settling cement.
I then moved the wheelbarrow to the back not know what I was going to do with it. I had to think of where I was going to put this stuff garbage men weren’t going to take it for sure. So, next day or so I had a plan and to my surprise it was harder then cement and a real chore (about an hour) to get out of the wheelbarrow. So with this in mind, I do not think if your clay is anything like mine was, no tiller is going to do anything. My clay started to appear after the sand about 14 inches down and went down to 2ftt or better, I stopped at about that point.@ 2feet wide at least. I am pretty limited on working with clay soil.
Randy,
Farmers in that area must have been real farmers, know what I mean?
I did see sand in Oklahoma just not in the are she lives in which is Anadarko. While I was there is rain and you talk about a mess. It was so slick and that red clay stuck to everything, And the rain just kind of laid on top of the ground. ( that was actually in Lawton) They didn't even have grass there. I kept thinking I would have my work cut out for me if I wanted to garden there. Speaking of watermelons I have some volunteer olants I think might be a melon of some kind. I just hope we don't get a renegade freeze to kill them off.
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