Garden Soil Help.

GareyD · Jan 7, 2004

Mark, I'm about 30 miles west of you on I-20 and the Alabama line, here is what I have done...

Put about 1 inch of COARSE builders sand, leaves (bags stacked on the curb around your neighborhood are a quick source), wheat straw, whatever, on your ground fairly evenly, sprinkle with 13-13-13 fertilizer and pelletized lime...lightly till, then sow clover or Austrian winter peas over the top and let it grow....(Green Manure, a gardeners second best friend after compost!!)

In the late spring, till everything in and wait a couple of weeks, then till it again....

That time of the year, WallyWorld always has sterilized manure on sale for $.89-$.99 a bag...take a smaller section of your garden plot 1/4 - 1/3 or so and string out your rows, dig a shallow furrow under the string about 1/3 - 1/2 the size of the manure bags and pour the manure into the furrow leaving it mounded, and then plant all the sets (tomato, pepper, squash) you want directly into the mounded rows.

Plant seeds you need in the rest of the garden....sow more clover into any extra ground, tilling it in when it reaches maturity. (allow a couple of weeks before re-tilling and planting)...I even plant row centers in clover, it will die back in the hottest, dry part of the summer, eliminating water competition to your garden plants!!

After harvest, cover the ground again omitting the sand unless needed, sow cover crop and let it grow...

In coming years, move the manure technique over from previous year(s) and do it again..

Keep adding organic material and cover crop to open ground and in 3-4 years you will have a garden spot to be proud of!!!

Keep an eye open around Alpharetta and North Atlanta...lots of smaller stables up there that usually are looking to have manure hauled...also...Hyponex down in Locust Grove/McDonough used to sell mushroom compost in bulk, this was a couple years ago, don't know if they still do or not.

Sorry if this got too long, just one of my favorite subjects /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

GareyD

PaulK · Jan 7, 2004

Mark:
I'm a few years ahead of you in this process -- and you can learn from my myriad mistakes.
My garden is 40x60 ft. and is about 1.5 ft. higher than the surrounding area because it has been amended with compost and coarse sand. 40 tons of sand and you-do-the-math umpteen yards of compost.
Anything grows well in it. I rotate crops, modify the PH according to the veggie's need, etc.
My perspective on gardening is born from my adolescent work on a golf course, construction of my own putting green, and bothering my neighbor who has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry.
There is an old saying: "Farming is 90% drainage and 10% common sense. If you lack common sense, add more drainage." The same thing is true for a putting green and a garden area that performs well every year.
When it comes to composting, you can but really don't want to throw all sorts of stuff into the ground and wait for it to break down. Ideally, all of your composting should be aerobic [with lots of air movement and the beneficial fungi that it harbors]. When turfgrass and gardens decline, it's usually because of fungal pathogens that thrive under anerobic conditions. When you till under organic material that has not broken down, you get the phenomenon of "nitrogen draft", wherein the microorganism population gets out of balance and ties up the absorption of nutrients by plants. Even if you were to add inordinate amounts of nitrogen to the soil, you'd still have the problems.
Now back to the original concern: composting. The textbook rule of thumb for a compost pile is 30:1 C:N ratio. If you get too low, i.e. only grass clippings which are 10:1, it will break down too fast for a full specturm of microorganisms and will smell. The smell is some of your N going skyward. If your ratio is 100:1, it will take a long time to break down and will probably not reach temperatures high enough the kill weed seeds. If you want just one big pile, find someone with manure to give your pile both N and a variety of fungi.

The complexity of my composting is driven by my lack of manure. I receive about 50 truck load of wood chips each year - using most of it as mulch and about 50 yards for my composting. I let the tree workers dump here for free as long as the chips are clean and are hardwood only [because they break down more rapidly]. Each spring I find myself with two types of compost piles. One is totally broken down and two seasons old. This one goes into the soil. Another contains the previous year's shredded leaves, grass clippings, and wood chip mix. It's about 8' high and wide and 30' long and has been covered with a tarp over the winter so that it continues to break down. I'll take a percentage of this pile to add to fresh wood chip loads to provide microorganisms, some N, and the capacity to retain moisture. I'll also use some of the overwintered pile to combine with grass clippings throughout the summer. I cook the grass clippings well at a 25:1 ratio to kill out the weed seeds. By the time fall rolls around, I will mix the predominately wood chip mix with the predominately grass clippings mix in preparation for the "leaf-o-rama". This ready mix probably consists of 50 yards of wood chips with 25 yards [by volume] of grass clippings and 200-300 gallons of water [over 4 months]. The key with wood chips is to get them saturated with water in preparation for the fall mix with leaves. They provide air pockets, moisture and carbon sources. When you combine 10-20 yards of leaves to this mix, they will heat up beautifully without combusting. Beautiful is an understatement. They often break down in 2 weeks. Leaves are a great mineral source. They provide trace minerals to your garden.
I hope that this gets you on the road to having great garden soil. The complexity of the soil will help avoid dozen of diseases on your plants.
Paul.

riptides · Jan 8, 2004

I believe Gary said this -
( Add some gypsum. It keeps the clay from packing too tight. )

Gypsum actually works very well over the years at turning clay into - shall we say dirt.

Cheap too. I spread it liberally over my lawn every chance I get, now 15+ years later, the front looks dark about 3 inches down.
Areas where it was not applied, are STILL clay..... Imagine if I would have tilled it in? Go figure.

-Mike Z. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

GregJ · Jan 8, 2004

Paul,
Great post. Thanks for sharing. Sounds like you really have a great system.

Greg

MarkV · Jan 8, 2004

Looks like I have a lot to learn and fortunately there are some great teachers here. I really appreciate all the information and have it in my new "Hope to be a Gardener someday" note book. Not sure I'll ever have it down to the science that PaulK does but I am looking forward to trying.

Thanks to GareyD I have already located a place to buy compost in bulk so that looks like a good starting point. I'll also look for coarse sand that I can get by the truckload. I have a dump truck so I'll see about getting a couple of loads of the partly composted wood chips and start my own compost pile with them for next year.

About the gypsum, should it be used in acidic soil? How about sheetrock scraps as a source for gypsum.

Keep the advice coming, I can see those veggies growing aready.

MarkV

RobertN · Jan 8, 2004

Check with your local Ag extension for a Master Gardener program. Here in California, they run through the local University of California offices.

The MG program offers training to volunteers for gardening in thier local area(as areas differ, they discuss those issues). The MG people are run through a condensed Horticulture program sort of. They do siminars, talks, ect, with season related topics(pruning, ect).

In addition to good info already posted here, the MG or Ag dept would have lots of good info for you.

Here is an example for El Dorado County, Ca
ceeldorado.ucdavis.edu

Joe1 · Jan 8, 2004

A soil sample analysis and a trip to you local Government AG office should be agood place to start. Also, a lot of Junior colleges and adult extension courses provide classes that are free or almost so and have an expert teaching the class that usually provide a lot of information because they like to do so.

sassafraspete · Jan 8, 2004

Sounds like a lot of tractor lovers here have had their hands in the soil also. What a great subject in the dead of winter. Hmmm, maybe I'll look up that seed catalog that came the other day. I love to hear the voices of experience. Always something to learn. PaulK...you set the target for us on that composting. I have been a subscriber to fine woodwoking magazine since the 70s, and one thing I learned is that some people find as much joy in builiding their workshop, collecting tools...maybe more so than actually building anything. Sounds like Paul gets as much if not more enjoyment out of making good soil, than gardening . I have a visual of all this steam coming from around Pauls' house in the winter. Looks like Yellowstone. I can remember my dad always sticking his hands in the dirt. He could tell a lot by just feeling it. I'm wondering if Paul or Bird spend a lot of time with their hands in the dirt. My advice to MarkV...get to know your dirt by using your hands, as good dirt must just feel darn good.

pete

Bird · Jan 8, 2004

( wondering if Paul or Bird spend a lot of time with their hands in the dirt )

Sure did during the Spring planting, at least. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

PaulK · Jan 8, 2004

Mark:
Gypsum does not alter the PH of the soil. It's often used instead of lime in cases where you want to keep an acidic soil and promote drainage. If you have azaleas in foundation planting [which, because of leaching from cement, reduces acidity] gypsum helps. It's function in clay is to granualize the soil and promote drainage. I use it on soil near my street where rock salt is used and tends to damage spruce trees.
As far as sheetrock scraps go, I'd be concerned about dioxin used in bleaching the paper - something I read a few years ago and can't say with certainty. I have used drywall plaster in my compost pile - it contains limestone and or gypsum, fine clay, perlite and silica, none of which can hurt the soil. The buckets carry a warning because the dry silica can get into your lungs and produce a well-documented lung malady. Early quarry workers got the disease - if my spelling is correct, it was "silicosis".
Regarding my hands in the soil -- my impetus for having a quality garden comes from my realization that the produce is far better than I can purchase for reasons of both health [ie. pesticides and fungicides in Mexico and California, etc.] and taste. My knowledge about gardening, as stated above, comes from golf course agronomy. In the early 1990s I went through the process of getting a commercial pesticide application license. I became convinced that fungicides don't really work. By "work", I mean that they are actually fungi "stats" [and temporarily distupt the development cycle] and not funci "cides" [literally "fungi killers"]. After a lot more reading, it became clear that all of the fungicides on the market really interrupt the reproductive cycle of the fungi thereby inducing the pathogens to produce even more spores for the next time the environmental conditions are favorable for new fungal growth. The only way to actually kill pathogens is to promote antagonistic fungi in the soil. Hence compost. The leaders in this research are at Cornell. This is not some "do-gooder" doctrinaire attack against chemical companies. It's clearly a better way to get quality produce.
Paul