New to dirt prep help

   / New to dirt prep help #1  

Ffphil

Silver Member
Joined
Mar 13, 2018
Messages
147
Location
Buckley, washington
Tractor
Yanmar YT359C
Hello all, I recently purchased a new tiller to make my wife a garden on our farm. Ive been reading you don't want to till the land until it has dried out or you will make mud rocks? Our land is grass field now and I will be turning it for the first time in probably 50 years. It used to be used for grazing cows. We live in Western Washington and its wet here a lot so not much chance of ground drying out like ive read about until July/August. Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks
 
   / New to dirt prep help #2  
Disc Harrow experience should tell you when soil is right. Both a Disc and Roto-tiller are soil mixers.

If dirt clings to Disc pans soil is too wet to roto-till.

Besides moisture content, soil content is important. Clay and other fine particle soils harden into adobe brick with less tilling than open/porus/sandy/highly organic soils. Some of Washington State is decomposed lava which should be less determined to turn into adobe brick than clay and other fine soils.

Till as much as you have to when soil is right. Stop then. Do not over till.
 
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   / New to dirt prep help #3  
As jeff9366 has said - wait until the ground is sufficiently dry. This is what the salesman told me when I bought my Troy Bilt. Hey - I'm over here on the "dry side" and I waited until mid - June. I thought - "a garden this first year is all but lost". But not so - we planted the third week of June and it all turned out great.

The following years I tilled and we planted the first week of June. This all worked fine for twelve years or so. Then Mother Natures little "beasties" put a higher demand on the crops than we could fend off. We started buying produce at the roadside stands down SW of us.
 
   / New to dirt prep help
  • Thread Starter
#5  
Thank you for all the advice.
 
   / New to dirt prep help #6  
What a difference location makes! I'm out in South Carolina and our "soil" here is pretty much beach sand and I'm 2 1/2 hours from the coast. I have to disc up my fields when they are pretty damp or I end up with a talcum type substance that is too fine to deal with and SO dusty you cant hardly drive through it!
 
 
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