I can't get enough organic material for my garden.

[Gary350]

I was noticing yesterday how dark my soil is and how many worms are in a shovel full of my dirt. I was digging holes to plant herbs and it is full of worms. It must have 35 to 50 worms in each shovel of dirt. The soil is so dark, it is almost black with organic material compaired to other soil in the yard. I wish I could keep it like this but it won't last. I collected so much grass clipping and dead leaves last summer it did not compost so I guess it will have to compost all this summer. I bought 4 bailes of peat moss 3.8 cu ft each to put in the soil again I will till it in tomorrow. I hauled in 2200 lbs of crushes lime stone and spread it pretty even over the entire garden. I hauled in 2 pickup truck loads of sand about 4600 lbs of sand and spread it on my 22 x 45 ft garden to help loosen up the clay soil. I enlarged my garden 5 ft so not it is 27 x 45 ft. The sand and gravel will stay but the orgainc material has to be replaced every year. I have an add on craigs list wanting free sheet rock scraps the gypsum is good for the garden. I have hauled a small amount of sheet rock myself but not much. I can't get enough organic material I just wish there was some way to load up the soil with lots and lots of organic material and make it stay.

[Sage Hermit]

toss in your banana peels too.

Seriously why are you so heavy into adding all this material to your garden? I am curious like a cat now please give some details on your plans, not so I can help you (not the best gardener) but so I can know whats up. Seems like something big is taking place and I feel I am missing out on the details.
can you take some photos? love to hear more.

[Dillbert]

Gary -

I use the (fresh) grass clippings as mulch in the veggie garden - keep it 6-8 inches from the plants proper until it cools off - it all keeps going in the garden all season long. get dug/tilled in at the end.

leaves I chop up with the mower and leave in a heap for 3 years - makes nice leaf mold which gets tilled in.

I have very mixed feelings about the wallboard for gypsum. you've heard about the Chinese issue with strange wallboard? who knows what they put in it....

sawdust (check the furniture guys) - must be composed / left to rot/age for 2-3 years but once 'not fresh' is a good 'bulk' source

I know exactly what you mean about 'color' of the soil - I've expanded my plot at it's like night and day - dark/rich to yellow clay.....

[rainbowgardener]

Let us know how it goes. I'm trying to make sense of it, a ton of limestone and 2+ tons of sand on a 1215 sq foot plot. That's like 2 pounds of limestone and and 4 pounds of sand per square foot. How many inches deep are you piling this stuff?


I'm having trouble putting it all together. You said:

I can't get enough organic material for my yard

My soil is super rich and dark and full of organics and earthworms

I'm adding literal tons of inorganics to my yard.

Sorry, but I can't make all of those things fit together.

And the limestone and gypsum are to break up clay, but it doesn't sound like your soil is (any longer?) very clay- y. Am I missing something; are all the amendments for a different part of the yard than the dark rich full of earthworms part?

Anyway, perhaps there's a little overkill going on and you could just relax a little?

[Dillbert]

uhmmm, sand is about 90 lbs/cubic foot. depends on [a lot stuff...]

4 pounds of sand would cover one sq ft about half an inch deep.

adding sand to clay soil is an established approach - but lacking organic matter, clay+sand=concrete

[Kisal]

adding sand to clay soil is an established approach - but lacking organic matter, clay+sand=concrete

Yep! BT, DT! I even added a little gravel into the mix. My side yard looks like it's paved with aggregate.

[DoubleDogFarm]

Very interesting. I want more detail also. I brought in 4.5 yards of free horse manure for (12 ) 3ft by 20ft beds. I thought this was excessive.

[Gary350]

Let us know how it goes. I'm trying to make sense of it, a ton of limestone and 2+ tons of sand on a 1215 sq foot plot. That's like 2 pounds of limestone and and 4 pounds of sand per square foot. How many inches deep are you piling this stuff?


I'm having trouble putting it all together. You said:

I can't get enough organic material for my yard

My soil is super rich and dark and full of organics and earthworms

I'm adding literal tons of inorganics to my yard.

Sorry, but I can't make all of those things fit together.

And the limestone and gypsum are to break up clay, but it doesn't sound like your soil is (any longer?) very clay- y. Am I missing something; are all the amendments for a different part of the yard than the dark rich full of earthworms part?

Anyway, perhaps there's a little overkill going on and you could just relax a little?

The new 5 ft section I added to my garden is clay. It needs all the organic material I can get. The part of the garden I have been working for 18 years is doing pretty good. Your right about 1 ton of lime stone and 2 tons of sand its only a drop in the bucket but every little bit helps. I did the lime stone for slow release lime but last year I found out lime stone is too slow release I had to give the tomato plants some lime last summer. I did the sand to loosen the soil most of the sand is in a spot 8 x 22 ft for root crops like potatoes, onion, carrots. The carrots did great and the Garlic and Leeks are doing good too. Melons also like sandy soil so this year I will experement and plant melons there. I tilled in the peat moss today and it appears to be nealy nothing. I think I need to add about 10 more bails of peat moss to the 5 x 45 ft new section of soil just so it looks like I actually did something to the soil, clay is pretty bad. The University of Tennessee has been experementing with gypsum for several years they published their research data and crop production pretty much doubled for every thing except potatoes the sweet potato crop tripled. I think it basically loosens the soil so roots can grow easier.

The crushed lime stone I added to the garden last spring is what they call manufactured sand. It is ground up lime stone nothing larger than a cucumber seed. It is mostly sand size particles and it really helped to loosen the soil. I put it over the whole garden except the spot where I grow potatoes I read lime causes potatoes to have scabs.

[rainbowgardener]

"Your right about 1 ton of lime stone and 2 tons of sand its only a drop in the bucket but every little bit helps. "

Wasn't what I was suggesting.... I was suggesting perhaps overkill, but everyone has to figure out what works for them.

[Dillbert]

"amending" a heavy clay soil involves some staggering numbers. frankly I think it works out better in the long run to start with a clay soil as the clay has lots of minerals and tends to hold moisture better, but going from clay to loam takes time and many pounds of other stuff.

in the chart below - and keep in mind the percentages are based on "dry weights" - a loamy soil is on the order of 70% sand. certainly a natural clay soil will already have some sand in it. regardless, adding sand and organic matter into a medium to large plot goes into amendments by the ton.

[The Helpful Gardener]

Clay soil doesn't compact because it lacks mineral content, which is all you are adding with sands and gypsum; it compacts because it lacks humus and biology to hold porosity open.

So why add more minerals instead of more organic matter?

HG

[Dillbert]

HG -

you got to add both - well, I supposed one could go only with organic matter - it'll work in the end but sand does help break up the clay but only with the addition of organic matter to prompt 'tilth' - just organics&clay makes for a fairly heavy soil tho. but just sand and clay is not a good mix.

as for mineral content, sand is just mini-rocks. quartz, mostly. clay has a lot more to offer. technically I suppose sand does 'break down' - albeit very very slowly. gypsum acts more at a chemical level to disperse the clay whereas sand is a mechanical 'aerator'

as you can see from the chart - getting to a 'loam' is a 70% +/- sand type of situation. but it does require thorough mixing of sand & organic matter into the clay. if you take a lump of clay - in the 'squeezed = mud ball stage' - out of the garden, weigh it, stick it in the oven and take it to bone dry, in round numbers you'll find it's about 50% water by weigh. I've always used the 50-50 by _volume_ ratio sand to clay for the initial work.

garden fork type digging/turning is unlikely to create that mixing very quickly - tilling relatively dry clay does break it up and once broken into smaller clumps of clay the organics & sand do a quicker job at turning heavy clay into loam. so for a 6" tine tiller you'll get mebbe 4 inches of real till depth - so 4 inches of "top clay" - work in 4 inches of sand and as much organics as you can get your hands on . . . works out.

it's like compost - put it in a heap, it'll compost; turn & tend, it'll turn into compost quicker.

with my prior 420 sq ft garden I started with 18 cubic yards of mushroom soil and 14 tons of sharp sand. layer&till, layer&till until all gone. on the first passes I cheated - my brother had a Kubota with a 4-5 ft(?) wide hydraulic tiller - that made it like way easy.... with a front bucket to scoop half the garden to the side, dump on sand & mushroom soil, till, regrade,,, one afternoon made for pretty decent 'starter' soil.

then I made a to scale drawing, and with a flat shovel scooped paths between pseudo raised beds (nothing to contain them, just scoop the path onto the adjoining area - 'raised mound if you will)

all season long all the grass clippings went to mulch, along with the chopped/composted leaves. in the fall I would till the paths first - tilling down below the 'hard pan' layer - essentially tilling to 'double depth.' next season, move the path over so the prior 'hilled' area got tilled to double depth. after the area had been double depth tilled, I rotated the paths 90 degrees and repeat.

after 4-5 years of that 'plan' I had to _push_ the front tine tiller through the fluffy soil. root crops - like carrots - did especially well - I was able to grow those 10-12" long carrots no problem [g]

[The Helpful Gardener]

Dill, do you know what clay is?

It's ground up sand.

So your answer is add more sand and use a big machine to grind it up more?

I'm poking some fun here at the general concept (at your expense, of course ); I recognize this is the collective thinking of a good deal of experienced and even professional horticulturists and agriculturalists, but I just think it is a broken model.

Humus is the missing component in most soils I see and it answers virtually every question you might have for any growing you would care to do. Lack nitrogen? Lack CEC? Porosity? Moisture? Add humus...

Compost, compost, compost...

HG

[DoubleDogFarm]

Compost, compost, compost...

I agree with this 100% I've turned my sticky blue clay into chocolate cake with compost and manures.

[Gary350]

Buying compost material is about to bankrupt me. Peat moss is $10 a bale I could use 10 more bales. I can get mulch $15 a scoop. I horse manure but it is 90% straw or 90% saw dust $15 a scoop. Straw is very hard to deal with its almost impossible to shovel and its hard to till in too. I am thinking I may not plant the new 5 x 45 part of my garden this year I might just add compost material this year then see how it looks next year. Peat moss works but it doesn't seem to last long I have been adding 4 bales of peat moss to the whole garden every year for many years. Fall leaves would work better if I could grind them into powder. I used a kitchen blender to experement and leaves grind up real nice all I need now is a way to grind up all my leaves in the fall. Only problem we have lots of rain and the leave are seldom dry and its impossible to till wet leaves in to mud.