I Want to Try Something Else

[digitS']

...
maybe I can get DH to help with turning it over with the spading fork, and not do the tilling this year again.

I don't try "turning" the soil with the fork. Considering the gravelly nature of my soil, turning it would not work very well. Each "forkful" would tend to fall through the tines if lifted above the soil surface.

I am loosening the soil to that 11" depth. In other soil types, the soil may lift and this technique may not work so well. One might think that I am trying to lift it but I push the handle nearly down parallel to the surface. By that point, the tines have broken free of nearly all of the soil.

It makes for good stretching exercise. My feet become a little sore pushing the fork into the ground after a day of doing this work. It's easy enuf on the back and arms. My garden is probably too large and I'm too olde to do the entire thing this way. Therefore, I acquiesce to DW insistence that we join the neighbor in having the tractor guy till all or some once a year.

Steve

 

[seedcorn]

If the tiller is hard to control, you have it set up wrong. Front tine are the hardest to set up to do sod. Rear tine that can rotate front and back, make simple work of hard souls or easy. Should just follow it. No effort, no work.

 

[so lucky]

Steve, your loose rocky soil sounds kind of like a dream to me, lol. We all want what someone else has, I guess. My soil has so much clay, even though I turn it every year, it still appears like it has never been turned before. Big slices of solid clay, cut with a shovel, reminds me of a big scoop of chocolate ice cream. You know, where the scoop skids over the ice cream and leaves breaks in the surface? Any way, that describes my soil. Good for holding moisture, though.

I just checked the price on propane garden torches and they seem pretty reasonable.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

The only 'benefit' I got from deep mulch was a baby BOOM of slugs.

I did the deep mulch one time and had a baby boom of cut worms. It was horrible and started my habit of planting a nail next to stem of small plants like cabbage and kale.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

A tune up may be all that your tiller needs.

It has been gone several years. I am not sure what happened to it. I looked out the window before DH loaded it up for the dump. It had a hole in the side with the sides kind of charred black.

 

[Beekissed]

Since you've been doing mulch for some time now, could be you won't need a tiller but only a cultivator. They disturb the soil less deeply but still work it up enough for planting and exposing bugs. I use a little Mantis cultivator here and it does VERY well in the composted mulch....not so well if the hay is not composted down enough, then the hay strands tend to wind up in the tines.

Sure wish you could get a couple runner ducks....they took my thousands of squash bugs and many horn worms down to a normal amount~manageable amount of squash bugs and not a single horn worm this year. I think I'll be keeping ducks from now on, even if it's just a few for the garden. They eat less than chickens, are more quiet and they forage better, so they have many pluses.

 

[flowerbug]

Steve, your loose rocky soil sounds kind of like a dream to me, lol. We all want what someone else has, I guess. My soil has so much clay, even though I turn it every year, it still appears like it has never been turned before. Big slices of solid clay, cut with a shovel, reminds me of a big scoop of chocolate ice cream. You know, where the scoop skids over the ice cream and leaves breaks in the surface? Any way, that describes my soil. Good for holding moisture, though.

I just checked the price on propane garden torches and they seem pretty reasonable.

we have mostly clay here too. i don't turn the whole garden if i can help it. for a bit of extra drainage i'll make rows up a few inches but i don't make a formal raised bed out of it. by the end of the season you can't usually tell i've done anything at all. the soil improves each season as i add more garden debris and other organic matter to it that i can scrounge up. it's much better now than it was when i started.

 

[flowerbug]

I did the deep mulch one time and had a baby boom of cut worms. It was horrible and started my habit of planting a nail next to stem of small plants like cabbage and kale.

i've not heard of that trick before. we have used plastic cup collars around plants to protect them from cutworms, but we've not had damage like that we've not used them in years. if you want a "greener" cup use waxed paper cups which will eventually be degradeable.

 

[flowerbug]

in thinking more about the skimming technique i use with the flat bladed shovel and the issue of needing some upper body strength to get it skimmed along. well if you had a pretty firm rubber mallet you could use that to bump the shovel to get it skimming. i'm sure someone out there too could come up with an invention that would do it... hmmm...

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

i've not heard of that trick before. we have used plastic cup collars around plants to protect them from cutworms, but we've not had damage like that we've not used them in years. if you want a "greener" cup use waxed paper cups which will eventually be degradeable.

I think you could use a stick, just something where they cannot wrap around the stem. The paper cups might be easier. The nails rust, but I pick them up and reuse the next year. DH bought big boxes of nails in 1998. We owned 10 acres of land and we were planning on building a lot of different things, but we sold the land and over the years the nails have been used for different things. I still fear cutworms and when I do put mulch out on the garden, like I have right now in parts of the garden, it just sends cold chills through me and I want to go rake it up. Lol