Poor soil

[dlskidmore]

Update:
I’ve been quite busy this spring with the community garden. The plowman got frustrated with the spring wetness and gave up on it for a bit too long, but it’s finally turned under and there are a few crops still worth planting this year. I also had a horrible year for transplants, I think I took off my humidity domes too early, and most of what came up wilted. Third bad stroke was a volunteer that helpfully put a bunch of transplants on top of the rows of corn I had just put in. *sigh* But it’s all a learning process, it takes a few years to bring a new plot of land up to full fertility anyway. There’s a reason I didn’t ask the church for a budget, and I’m keeping expenses down as much as possible, if I’m not willing to gamble my own cash, it’s not worth the church’s scarce resources.

Since I’m not in a position to have any handy steers about, I’m looking at a BCS walking tractor to do some work where the big tractor is having trouble getting in. Somehow though hubby isn’t convinced I need my own tractor before I have my own land. Go figure. 🙂

(Long term plan when I have my own place is to have a couple handy steers for dragging pasture and freight hauling, but do tillage on my garden plot and mowing on the fields with the BCS. Not sure what I’ll do for haying, probably buy as baling equiptment isn’t worth it on my scale, and putting it up loose by hand will be a lot of work.)

On a personal note:
I’ve gotten a hold of one of the root causes of my health issues, and have been much more active since November. So far this year I’ve not once had to leave the garden due to fatigue, although my schedule has been tight enough to only allow 2 hour sessions anyway. I’m now having real hope that my farm dreams can be a reality, and I can work hard enough at it to be profitable and not just a housewife’s folly that depends on hubby’s income to work. Current long term budget says we can look for a place in spring of 2013, so I have time to build up more strength.

Question:
The plot is about a half acre, heavy clay that needs heavy ammendment. How many pickup truck loads of manure should I add and how often? And enough rotten hay to mulch over that? It looks like we’re getting a couple dozen bales of hay for mulch each year. They do up “harvest festival” big, (although it is really a halloween replacement and has little to do with harvests), and order bales for decoration that we can have afterwards. The archery ministry is also going to give us hay bales that have broken down too much for them to use for targets any more. I’ve also got a friend out in the country who’s family sold off their cattle on short notice and has rotting hay in the barn I can use. The manure supply is a vague promise involving a volunteer’s neighbor, but there are confined dairy places about here that I might be able to call and work with if that does not pan out.

[Robert MoonShadow]

Sounds like you’re on track! I’ve got 2 garden locations that are so heavy in deer track, the locals are mocking me for my attempts…’cept they don’t know my secret weapon.
Cougar urine. Smell fades after a few hours to where humans don’t notice it, but it’s been effective here for 3 weeks of rain almost every day. Spray around perimeter in bushes/tall grass that the deer can’t scope out too easily. My donks get fidgety, but it also seems to be working on the skunks & coon, too. I’ve got the website if you want it.

[dlskidmore]

@Robert MoonShadow 27647 wrote:

Cougar urine. … I’ve got the website if you want it.

Please do share. Dad used cyote urine when I was younger, but I have not seen any recently.

I’ve gone in three stores and not found any clover or field peas for ground cover in the parts I won’t get to this year. It’s all fragile grasses and fancy chemicals to make it grow. Much longer and I’m gonna just try to germinate a couple pounds of black eyed peas from the supermarket.

Hopefully when I move further out of the city I’ll find some more sensible places to buy seed and supplies.

[mitchmaine]

push come to shove, you can always use people urine. penny used to catch our pee in a pail in the bathroom and spread it around the edge of the garden and it worked miracles. she used to hang up my used sweaty t-shirts on posts around the garden too. deer get used to people smells, but not that one.

[Robert MoonShadow]

http://www.casscreek.com/store/c/107-Scent-Lures-and-Attractants.aspx?sort=PriceDesc&pi=3
Seems like they reduced the price of shipping after I bought it. *sigh* One thing though: it took almost 2 weeks to get to me by fedex, then the last 2 days was by USPS, anyways! Might check w/ them to change that. As for cover crop seeds: try Peaceful Valley or Johnny’s Seeds

[dominiquer60]

After some other local vegetable farmers recommended it we have tried Plantskydd this season. It is jut basically dried pigs blood. We use the powder form and spray it around the perimeter of our individual fields. It is a little tricky because it needs to be mixed with a paint mixer on the end of a drill gun, and you have to use it right away and clean the sprayer out quick because it will gel right up on you. The first field we sprayed around is right next to a major deer highway. We did not cross their path with the Plantskydd, but we went around the field (kale, chard, broc, lettuce, scallions) once and we applied it across the road where they would have to cross to go directly into the field instead of their path. So far so good and it was a wet spring too. We finally planted out our cucs, zucs, sweet potatoes in one field and tomatoes, eggs, and pepper in another, both in similar situations, right next to major deer paths using Plantskydd around the perimeter.

The key to this stuff is to apply it before they know what is in the field. Ideally we would have sprayed it before we laid mulch down, instead we did it the same day we planted. In both fields we saw no deer track across the mulch before planting, so they don’t seem to be taking short cuts across these fields at the moment which is a good thing.

Good luck with it all,

Erika

[dlskidmore]

Some vendors had scent tags to hang the scents up nearer nose height. Do you use anything like that, or just drop it around on the ground?

How much do you use? It is sold in a little 2 oz bottle. It’s not listed as concentrated, that’s less than one leak for a real cougar.

[dlskidmore]

Blood meal I know I can get locally. I think it’s cow blood…

[Robert MoonShadow]

Yeah the scent tags would work – I just don’t want any more expense – not even that. I spray it (just about 3 squirts) up high on a bush (somewhat towards the inside of the bush), a tall tuft of grass… and for area saturation, about 5 squirts on my pirate flags (you can see them in my photo on the events thread). My donks sslloowwllyy eat their way into whatever patch of tall grass gets sprayed in their grazing area. I didn’t go with Plantskydd because of the hassles of mixing/spreading it, and the bloodmeal is good, but attracts coons and skunks. I only spray it about every 30-40 feet and I just used almost all of it now, after 2 times, and 2 gardens…should last another 2 or 3 weeks again, which gives me about 1 1/2 months on (for me – they lowered the s&h now) $15 dollars. It’ll last longer once the rain quits. I agree w/ Erika; it’s important to deter them before the food is up; much easier to break a convenient habit for them than to drive them out of the only source of green around. If I find a better price on it, I’ll let you know. One thought: I’m not sure how effective it would be in an area that doesn’t have cougars…?

[Robert MoonShadow]

My friend just suggested that instead of scent tags, to use tampons stuffed into the limb of a tree…

[dlskidmore]

@Robert MoonShadow 27665 wrote:

I’m not sure how effective it would be in an area that doesn’t have cougars…?

I was wondering about that. Man is the only natural deer preadator around here. There was a baby bear wandering in the county and it caused a huge stir. Cougars are near mythical, reported sightings make the news and are accompanied by experts claiming that it was not so because we don’t have Cougars around here. We have fox, raptors, and owls, but they’re not really big enough to trouble deer.

[Tim Harrigan]

@dlskidmore 27640 wrote:

Update:
Question:
The plot is about a half acre, heavy clay that needs heavy ammendment. How many pickup truck loads of manure should I add and how often? And enough rotten hay to mulch over that? It looks like we’re getting a couple dozen bales of hay for mulch each year. They do up “harvest festival” big, (although it is really a halloween replacement and has little to do with harvests), and order bales for decoration that we can have afterwards. The archery ministry is also going to give us hay bales that have broken down too much for them to use for targets any more. I’ve also got a friend out in the country who’s family sold off their cattle on short notice and has rotting hay in the barn I can use. The manure supply is a vague promise involving a volunteer’s neighbor, but there are confined dairy places about here that I might be able to call and work with if that does not pan out.

That is hard to answer because manure vary from lightly soiled straw maybe 15 lb/cu-ft to wet bedded back 50 lb+/cu-ft. The heavier would also probably be much higher in nitrogen which the soil microbes will need to break down the straw or sawdust bedding. I would tend to pay attention to a soil test so soil P does not get to out of whack which it will with too much manure.

From a practical POV I think you should only put on enough manure that you can easily work into the soil with the tillage you are doing. If you have too much of the straw (carbon) it will tie up the available nitrogen and your plants will be deficient. Try to work in a legume cover crop like red clover or crimson clover, apply manure over that and till it in. That will provide a N kick to balance the carbon and also keep a living root system growing throughout more of the year.

One PU load is about 64 cu-ft so that might be one ton of manure and less than 1/2 of that will be dry matter. Typical soil is about 2 million pounds in the surface 6 inches. So you are not going to have a big impact just by dumping manure on. You really want to create conditions that will allow natural processes to work so you want to feed the soil.

It will take time, you can’t do it in one year. Think cover crops, organic amendments like manure or compost, no more tillage than necessary and a 5 year timeline.

[Robert MoonShadow]

Dl – I agree w/ Tim (not that I’m any kind of expert) – it takes time, plain and simple. One of my gardens is on an old mill site; mostly sawdust that’s been rotting for 20+ years, on sandy ground. On this site, I brought in 10.5 tons (14 p/u loads, loaded down ’til the springs were flat) of cow manure. It made the sandy soil kinda clay-ey, which is what I wanted to help hold moisture this year. I then planted heavy nitrogen feeders on it. If you can get goat manure, say from a dairy, it’d go on just fine the way it is: rabbit and goat won’t burn the plant.
If not cougar, the coyote or bear urine might work…and the cougar might work, anyways; I suspect it’s recognizable as a large predator.

[dlskidmore]

@Tim Harrigan 27674 wrote:

From a practical POV I think you should only put on enough manure that you can easily work into the soil with the tillage you are doing. …Try to work in a legume cover crop like red clover or crimson clover, apply manure over that and till it in.

So you wouldn’t use it as fert around the row crops? I thought the corn at least would benefit from direct application.

@Tim Harrigan 27674 wrote:

It will take time, you can’t do it in one year. Think cover crops, organic amendments like manure or compost, no more tillage than necessary and a 5 year timeline.

Yeah, that’s what I told a volunteer disheartened by the soil, that we’d improve it over time and would not see peak production for five years.

The area is twice as big as what I’ve worked before, and the other plot was A) already broken in, and B) I was not the primary caretaker. I’m trying to take it slow and work what I can do well, rather than rush to maximum production. No sense putting in what I can’t weed and harvest. I’m planning on clover between the rows and byond what I can get planted in time.

You mention red and crimson clover, any reason to choose that over white? I think white is what I found available last I looked locally. I can mail order if there’s a good reason to do so.

[dlskidmore]

@Tim Harrigan 27674 wrote:

From a practical POV I think you should only put on enough manure that you can easily work into the soil with the tillage you are doing. … no more tillage than necessary

Back to your tillage point, you’re saying don’t till to work in manure, add manure to match existing till? No ammendment between now and when I do fall turn-under?

This year is getting heavy tillage. One pass with the plow when it was too wet, and 1-2 passes with a rototiller. This fall I’m going to till the crops under and try to put in a hill/furrow while I’m at it to encourage earlier spring drainage.

I’ve handled shale softer than the clay lumps coming out of this soil. It should improve as it gets more organics in it. It’s already vastly improved where the sod got torn up well. The single-pass tillage areas are still very difficult to hand dig in, the double-pass areas are nice to dig, but still have some fist sized lumps in it, so it’s not overpulverized. I am limited by volunteer help with the plowing, and not having my own equiptment to do it exactly how I want. I’m trying to rent the machine I eventually want to buy, but apparently the local dealer does not do rentals. Hubby is not enthused about buying any heavy equiptment for the community garden before I have my own market garden at home. (Spring 2013)

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