update for today. This morning I arose to the sound of the weather lady throwing my plans for the day in the trash. They called for frost tonight and today was the day I planned on putting all my tomatoes in the ground.
but I said screw you weather lady!
and went out and planted 8 romas and 5 early harvest. also caught up on some much neglected yard work. Real work schedule and yard work schedule tend to conflict a lot.
I planted these on whats is probably the worst spot of my whole garden plot. for whatever reason the clay in this spot is just so much more.....well more. I can never seem to stop pulling up rocks even though I have ran the tiller over this spot at least a dozen times since the ground was workable. Till, rake out rocks, till rake out rocks repeat over and over.
I also noticed I'm getting a one inch layer of super compacted sand. I never seen this before but I keep digging out chunks of it. Red sand thats hard but real brittle. I can crack it and break it up by hand fairly easily.
So what I did was go down about a foot with my pitchfork and broke up as much as I could. I then spread some peat moss, gypsum, bone meal, mushroom compost, and composted manure across the rows and tilled that in with the pitchfork. dug my holes for the plants, threw in a handfull of gypsum and a little potash and bonemeal into each hole. fingers crossed they do well.
I'm beginning to get nervous about this whole deal!
I have always grown in raised beds where I have complete control over the soil because I put it there! Growing in this clay is new to me. I think I did a pretty good job amending it so far. the top layer stopped cracking and developing a crust after drying. but 8 inches to a foot in its just clay. hope those tomatoes have some strong roots!
pics to follow a little later.
