Improving soil

At 08:25 AM 5/4/98 -0700, Kurt McCullum wrote:

>>>>
So I was able to see what my soil looked like to about 10 feet down. It's mostly a clay like soil all the way down so I will have a lot of work ahead of me. My plans are to start with one side of the garden and work towards the other. There is about 200 sqft which has to be dealt with so I will be spending most of the summer turning the compost bin and looking for anything I can put into it. As far as the no till method, I have read various books which contradict themselves on this subject. 'How to Grow More Vegetables...' says to use the double dig method and dig down 24" and to repeat this every year. 'Square Foot Gardening' says to double dig (12" deep) once and then never walk on the soil again.
<<<<

Double digging only matters if the top 1/2 is different from the bottom half.

If there's no live soil, it's just all clay with NO topsoil or organic material in the top section, just dig as deep as you can instead of "double digging" and replacing the top soil at the top and the bottom soil at the bottom.

THEN work on incorporating compost into as much of the soil as you can, and if you redig later you will double dig as the top section will have more organic material in it and you won't want it ending up at the bottom of your bed (unless you really want to amend the whole 12-24" that you are digging and thus plan to start over again with amending the new top section).

OK, no more procrastinating out of me! I'm starting on my garden plot *this* morning, I have no more excuses. I bought 4" veggies yesterday (tomaters, a pepper, a squash) and I have some pepper and lettuce seedlings I started a while back, and a new fancy-schmancy shovel. The weed plot at this (new for me) rental is under attack! (As is my expanding waistline, I'm gonna kill 2 birds in one stone and get some exercise too :-).

jc

-- To unsubscribe, send a message to: majordomo@lists.umsl.edu with the single body line: unsubscribe sqft Contact owner-sqft@lists.umsl.edu with any admin questions.
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index