This is a response to Peter's post:


Hello Peter:

You asked about clay soil:

There are many articles on line about improving clay soil, but the basics are:

- add compost

- mulch where possible

- if you aren't growing something in a particular area, compost it anyway and cover the compost with layers of straw or shredded bark and let these work in slowly

- avoid compacting the soil (walking on it, over tilling it)

- be careful with water to avoid saturation (see my raised bed post)

- be patient - this is true of all work with plants, of course!

Some people suggest adding sand. This will usually make things worse - you will make something resembling concrete, which is a mixture of cement and aggregate [sand or gravel]!  

Soil nutrients/conditioning:

When we first started a garden, in 2001, we had a soil analysis done by the University of Wisconsin soil lab. I only had one sample tested and since then have done testing myself. The results are pretty consistent – low nitrogen levels, good phosphorus levels and low potassium levels. They also tested for organic matter and reported 4%, not a bad number, but they used a loss-on-ignition method that overestimates organic content. The biggest surprise was the pH – it was 6.8, slightly acid and unusual for our area (which, as I said earlier, is usually alkaline – 7.2 or so).  

I have since done pH testing myself and always come up with readings over 7, but the resolution of my test is not very good.

We plan to have more samples tested by a laboratory this year and I will list the results when they come in.

In order to correct the low potassium level and help with the clay soil we used a soil amendment called green sand (the mineral glauconite). We dug in about 100 kg over three seasons, using about 14 kg/row (the rows are about 9 m long and 1 m wide). I’m not sure what green sand is called in Hungary, but here is a link: green sand

We use a couple of kinds of organic fertilizers as nitrogen sources. One is made from sewage plant solids – this is a bit controversial these days as all kinds of strange things can show up in sewage plant wastes (medications, heavy metals, (in)organic chemicals). The stuff we used is certified organic for US use but I’m a bit skeptical about anything certified by the government… Still, it is 10-1-5 (N-P-K) and the plants seem to like it. It has little or no odor. We also use a fish-derived fertilizer. This is less potent, at 2-0-1, and a bit smelly, too.

Time:

As far as time goes, we live in Madison and go to our farm on the weekends, spending Friday and Saturday night there. During the gardening season we sometimes spend 12 hours working on Saturday and another 3-4 on Sunday, but this is extreme. I would guess we put in 8-10 hours each week, on average. Sometimes I go to the farm during the week and mess around by myself (being a professional dilettante, I can do pretty much what I please but Wendy still works and is a bit more responsible). Right now I am spending quite a bit of time tending our sprouting seeds – putting up starting trays, watering, messing with the lights, etc. That counts for a few hours a week, too, but only in the March through May period.

Things we have learned:

The most important thing we have learned is to slow down – gardens work at the speed of the seasons, not at our speed. A corollary to this is to plan ahead. If you don’t plant garlic cloves in October you won’t have whole bulbs in July.

Next, I guess, is not to plant more than we can eat. Twenty tomato plants are easy to start but we can’t eat that many tomatoes, let alone take care of that many plants. The same goes for cucumbers and zucchini. Good cantaloupe and watermelon, on the other hand, can be eaten at any time – breakfast, lunch and dinner, so we plant lots of them. 

Another key thing is to tolerate a few bugs – it’s better to have a few leaves munched off than to poison all the insects in the plot. Some insects, on the other hand, cannot be tolerated. This is especially true of Colorado potato beetles (see potato beetles). Once I see one of these I get out the rotenone and keep spraying until there are no more beetles. They can get of hand and destroy a potato crop in two weeks (that happened to my Amish neighbor a couple of years ago).

There are many other things we have learned but I have forgotten most of them and have to re-learn each one again.

wb