The soil in my Garden is clay and is horrible to work with. Today I am going to try to amend the clay soil to help loosen it up and make it easier to work with. I am amending the clay with topsoil, pelletized gypsum, wood ash, and compost. I am using the John Deere 2025 tractor and a King Kutter tiller to add the amendments and till them in.
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22 Comments
i was born on a tenant farm in the living room of an old rickety cracker box farm house. my dad was the farmer – he could taste the soil and tell you what it needed. he was a natural and wonderful sweet kind loving man. i miss him greatly. when i watch your show i see the love for the land he had in you and it brings back wonderful memories. thank you for the work your wife and you do to bring back this wonderful way of life
That leather man tool sure is getting a lot of use,good to have it on you all the time.
Nice! You're on the right track! Organic matter is a big key to success and tilling helps it break down over the winter. Tilling in the spring makes for a super nice seedbed. this is written a couple years later, so I can imagine a beautiful garden this year! I speak with the authority of 50 years gardening in clay soil. PS. I'm jealous of that cool tractor! 🙂
Azomite is another great amendment for your soil.🖒💚👍
I would try getting free mulch from chip drop if I had this much to cover. A truckload of wood chips. Spread out in top then till the area with the track to mix in. I would do it in the fall to let compost over winter. It would take a few years, but I'd think it'd help alot
Why not put all the compost, it'll be tilled in n have all winter?
From 1975 to 1985 I lived on a farm in a huge 75 year old farmhouse that I heated with 2 big woodburner stoves. There was all the wood I needed on the farm, just had to cut down the trees and split the wood with an axe. It's a lot of work! I'm too old for that now but it's great to see younger folks doing what I loved so much.
Hairy Vetch planted in the fall with rye grain or wheat will and turned in under in the spring will build organic and add spring crop nitrogen use a turning plow with coulters to turn it in…just give it a week or to before planting for it to go through a decomposing heat cycle, it will develope a few degrees of temperture when decomposing
To make good compost get a bagger attachment for your lawn mower and each time you mow dump the clipping in your compost bins
You can spread hydrated lime on clay soil and till it in. We used in construction get heavy clay to dry out and be able to stabilize it for roadbeds for hiway construction
Awesome equipment you got there. Nice house.
good to see you nicely store thw wood ash; it is a best additive to increase the soil PH and make it less acidic…..
Just leave it uncovered for winter because if you get some snow it will bring in carbon from air
You should cover your compost pile so no light gets to it. It will help keep the sun from destroying valuable nutrients
Vermiculite is also a cheap option for breaking up the clay also some sand and hardwood leaves for loamy soil
I need that tiller. 😁
I did a number of experiments in my garden which has calcium rich sulfur poor light colored rocky limestone clay soil (8.2-8.5 ph). I've tried sheet mulching, deep mulching, no tilling my garden and when I dig into the soil I can still see a boundary layer between the organic material and the underlying clay soil in those sections which by the way were no till for about 3 years before trying other methods. I had one section where I took almost 5-6 inches of autumn leaves and tilled those into one of my garden beds and then mulched that bed with 3-4 inches of leaves in the late fall before winter last year. This year that bed is my most productive bed by far. That being said I believe that there is a time and a place for tilling and no dig is not a fix all solution for gardening but instead a long term sustainable maintenance plan for feeding the soil. If the soil is compacted, lacking organic matter or in my case still has boundary layers in the top 6-12 inches of soil then tilling in loads of organic material is fine. Then making sure to mulch over that tilled soil, and doing all of this preferably in fall to allow plenty of time for the soil microbes, fungi, and earthworms especially to consume as much of that organic material as possible. Going back to that tilled bed, when I dig into that bed it remains moist when my other beds are drying out and it is packed with earthworms. All the organic material that went into that bed has now been turned into rich nutritious worm castings and my plants love it. I plan on tilling in all of my home made compost and any fall leaves that I get this year into my entire garden. Tilling has a bad reputation because traditional farming methods involve tilling way too often and in my opinion for absolutely no good reason. I am not tilling simply to fluff up my soil which will cause volatilization of many of the important organic compounds in the soil such as humus, nitrogen and carbons as well as exposing the soil life to harsh sunlight, heat and drying wind. I am tilling in literally about half a foot of organic material; when soil is in contact with organic material decomposition rates increase. Furthermore, to prevent as much volatilization of those organic compounds its important to mulch over the surface with additional wood chips, compost, leaves or some other preferably organic material. Once you have the soil structure you are looking for then its a matter of feeding the soil with top dressings of organic matter. I like to fill my planting holes with homemade worm castings, add additional mulch at planting time and during the summer especially when we have 100+ degree days, trying to maintain about a 4-6 inch layer of mulch. One final note is having a living plant in the ground all year round as much as possible. In my area I can grow onions from seed and garlic planted in fall after bed prep to grow all through the winter. Leeks would also work as well as kale and lettuce all winter long. Plants will be the best for feeding the deeper layers of soil as they release exudates and their roots can go many feet down into the soil. Even lettuce with its relatively shallow root system can still reach down 2 even 3 feet or more in some cases. Plants and their exudates as well as deep mulching to feed the soil life (especially earthworms, which can dig down as deep as 6.5 feet) combine to basically terraform the deeper harder/impossible to reach layers of garden soil over time. There is no tiller that a back yard gardener can use to tunnel down 6+ feet into the soil and deposit organic material, only nature can do that.
Try some saw dust from the local saw mill.They will be happy to give it away.Our saw mills in southern indiana are always looking for ways to get rid of it.
I got alot of coarse sand lying around! I am not sure if I should use that in my heavy clay soil?
Make sure you torch that topsoil before adding it to your garden to keep from spreading weed seeds into your garden.
If I was blessed with a tractor I would be turning that compost pile every two weeks.
Put all that compost pile in the garden if its winter.
Humus from wood chips is the best to mix with clay.
Broccoli, cabbage etc. doesn't like large amounts of wood ash. Dont know what your going to grow but you might want to keep one section ash free.
Usually the shadiest side of the garden.
The term you were struggling with is 'floculate'. It is when the particles of clay soil bind together into larger particles to improve the drainage.