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jal_ut
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Picture of My Garden Plot

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applestar
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Looks like you are having fun! :D Already looking forward to next spring? :wink:
Is that a nest box on a topped, vine covered tree in the back? 8)

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rainbowgardener
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Beautiful, as always! :) I know you said you were going to plant some fall crop seed. Are you doing the whole plot in that or will you be planting some cover crop or what will you be doing not to leave your precious topsoil bare all winter?

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Gary350
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Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

If I had a garden like that I would feel like I was in heaven. It reminds me of when I was about 16 and I was helping my grandfather with his garden and the vegetable market.

imafan26
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Beautiful.

valley
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I like that Deere too.

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DoubleDogFarm
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Do I remember you saying your homestead is 70 or 90 acres?

Has it been in the family for over a hundred years

and is this your Great Grandfather
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cg ... d=23899703

Paradise History
https://www.paradise.utah.gov/about


Eric

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jal_ut
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DD, yes James Lofthouse is my Great Grandfather. He came to this valley in 1860. I still have 93 acres of the original homestead. The lot I now live on and the garden are not part of that original homestead.

Rainbow, My son is going to plant about 2/3 of what you see there. He gardens for a market. I too joined the market to sell honey, but take my garden excess to market. I planted about 12 40 foot rows of garlic and other things. The part I marked off for me is 6000 sq feet. So that is plenty for me and then some. :) I do not plan to cover it nor plant a cover crop. Come spring it will be ready to just go plant as soon as the top dries for the early stuff. By the first of May, when we can plant warm weather crops here, it will need a shallow tilling to get rid of the weeds that have germinated. I haven't had this much in garden in past years, but my son needed a plot so I said we could use some more of my lot instead of just growing grass to mow. The plot he has had was rented and the owner sold it. Anyway, I will get to see more of him next summer. :)

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jal_ut
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Apple, Yes that is a nest box for the Sparrow Hawk. It is on an old telephone pole planted specifically for that purpose. Yes, the hawks have nested in it every year since I put it up. Sorry, I don't have a picture handy.

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jal_ut
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Image

OK, I found a pic.

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digitS'
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Senator Mike Crapo's family stomping grounds!

From a Utah town of 904 to an Idaho town of 305 :wink: .

Big fish, small ponds!

Steve

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rainbowgardener
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You are the farmer, James, and I am not, and clearly you get great results with what you do. But clearly you have an interest also in conserving your heritage for future generations:

Call it the thin brown line. Dirt. On average, the planet is covered with little more than 3 feet of topsoil -- the shallow skin of nutrient-rich matter that sustains most of our food and appears to play a critical role in supporting life on Earth.

"We're losing more and more of it every day," said David Montgomery, a geologist at the University of Washington. "The estimate is that we are now losing about 1 percent of our topsoil every year to erosion, most of this caused by agriculture."
bbhttp://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/The- ... 262214.php

(all of this article is really worth reading)

Erosion is driven a lot by water and those of us in wet, hilly places can see a lot more than 1% of our topsoil wash down the hill, if left bare all winter. But the next driver of erosion after water, is wind. It seems like if you did nothing but scatter a layer of straw across all that, to be tilled in when you till in spring, it would help protect the soil you work on building.

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jal_ut
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We don't get severe winds and dust storms here. For the most part, we will have frozen ground and or snow covered ground all winter. I have never seen enough rain in these parts to give us a good irrigation, let alone wash soil away. My ground also has good drainage, 30 inches down it turns into a gravel bed and the water table is not high. If indeed some water did happen to run off the plowed area, any soil would be captured by the grassy area surrounding the garden.

For the above reasons, I am not very worried about my soil eroding away.

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digitS'
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Rainbowgardener, you "captured" a few stray letters in that link. Here is that Seattle PI article: (link)

The farmer interviewed is in my part of the world. The Palouse is at serious risk of erosion during just normal weather conditions. Notice that he talks about how he came around to trying no-till. He was tired of all the mud around his family home, built in the 1880's.

:wink:

Steve

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jal_ut
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To maintain fertility, I try to put more back on the soil than I take away. Manure, leaves, grass clippings, whatever organic matter I come up with goes back on the plot. Organic matter doesn't go in the garbage can, it goes on the garden or in the compost heap.

About 2/3 of that big plot in the picture was just broken up from sod this fall. There is lots of organic matter from the decomposing grass and roots. Next season it may well be beneficial to plant a cover crop of winter wheat about mid September after killing frosts. Too late this season. This more for the organic matter than protection from erosion. It is going to snow this week. The storm is about upon us as I write this. The growing season is over.

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bryce d
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That is a beautiful garden, puts my ten square to shame.
West half of my garden has had a truck load of leaves poured into it every year. also six yards of compost this last year.
I plowed the grass last summer on the east side so I could plant next year. I did plant a row of beans on one side.
I plowed the east side several times trying to get the grass to die.
I will plow one time in February if I get a good dry weekend to stir all of the leaves that I put in this fall.
I guess I just don't understand how you can let the dirt just sit. If you plant a cover crop then that is just more stuff to try and get killed off so you can plant vegetables. Now my plow only goes down about six inches and it would be really nice if I could go down double that. but I can't, so I really don't know what to do other than plow. I have noticed that the west side of the garden has much nicer soil than the East side.

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jal_ut
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This was the scene this morning:

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jal_ut
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Bryce, it would be nice to plow deeper, but for the most part 6 inches is about the max for most tilling and plowing. That will suffice. The roots will penetrate those layers lower, but we don't need to do it.

Around here some farmers will use what is called a "Sub-soiler". It is simply a big long and heavy tine mounted on a tool bar on the back of a tractor. It can be pulled and shoved quite deep to cut some grooves into the lower layers. I have never used one, and can't say much about its effectiveness in helping roots to penetrate deeper. The thought is that it breaks up any hardpan that has formed at the level of plowing depth.

Many studies have been done about the development of roots and how deep they go. Look up some of these papers and you will quickly see that roots have the capacity to go go down, whether we work the soil or not.

https://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrar ... 37toc.html

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bryce d
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My concern about going deep is that if you don't go deep then it is hard to cover all the vegetation.
Last Saturday I expanded my garden. The best I figure is that I am now up to 1800 square feet. Things go a lot nicer with a few good tools.

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jal_ut
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Things go a lot nicer with a few good tools.
Certainly right there.

Here is one of my best helpers. The Troybilt hilling potatoes.

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Another tool I find very useful:

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