Posts Tagged ‘clay soil’
Clay Chunks
For a change of pace after breakfast yesterday, I went for a bike ride to check the status of a route I’ve invited friends to join me on in a couple of weeks. The roads are all still there. Crops in the fields are starting to yellow but very few trees were sporting the colors of fall.
I am curious what the scenery will look like in two weeks.
After lunch, it was back to landscaping and increasing the calluses on my hands. The dirt the contractor hauled in for the job matches our soil pretty well for the percentage of clay it contains. With the bucket and tracks of the skid steer, the guy could press that dirt to a cement-like density.
In one area where we want water to flow to a culvert, he filled it too much and I needed to dig some out.
That proved to be a lot harder to accomplish than I expected. Asher volunteered to help and for once he was digging exactly where I wanted him to.
I found a good use for the large chunks of clay that didn’t get broken up by the skid steer. I’m dumping them on the slope beyond the shop garage to create a base where I want to reclaim it as easily driveable off the edge of the pavement.
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After the driveway was repaved, that slope had become too steep, just like the edges along the rest of the length. Here, I want to add enough fill to make that spot easy to drive over with the mower of ATV. By busting up the chunks of clay I will get a solid base to cover with composted manure and old hay before finishing it with some of our remaining lime screenings.
Since we only had the contractor work up to the barn area, any improvements between there and the house are up to us. I will be improving this area simultaneously with the rest of the length where we are finishing the work the contractor did.
This includes shopping for a water tank and sprayer we can pull behind the lawn tractor or ATV to water grass seed.
Gives us something to do around here.
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Two Soils
It’s a tale of two soils at Cyndie’s new garden plot. First, she turned over the turf, then she used a garden spade fork to break up the soil. In so doing, the clay content of that slope became very clear. Cyndie started tossing aside the clay clumps that were coming up in solid blocks.
Look at the difference in color of the dirt she tossed over the end compared to the composted manure soil we brought in yesterday from two different places where it’s been stored on our property for a few years.
I’m not really sure why it even matters. The grass was growing like gangbusters in that clay soil before we dug it all up.
Now, if the overnight temperatures would stop dipping down below freezing, that would be just great. Maybe she could start growing vegetables in that black gold.
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New Garden
Sunday afternoon launched our effort to create a new produce garden at Wintervale on the slope at the end of the driveway.
We plan to use old reclaimed wooden fence posts for a retaining wall that will create a terrace for a flat garden plot. There is space below it to add a second level farther downslope but we are going to start small. If all goes well, next year we can expand.
After my first challenge of devising a way to connect and secure all the posts, the more complicated next step involves installation of barriers to the local wildlife who are known garden pests. Cyndie wants me to bury hardware cloth to block burrowing critters. Great idea, in theory. A hassle to accomplish in reality.
I’m recommending Cyndie put in a giant hasta spread nearby to offer deer a more enticing alternative to leaping over the fence I plan to build. Then I can make that barrier primarily designed with rabbits in mind.
Cyndie got right to work breaking up the turf and confirming how much of our soil is clay. There will be a fair effort to doctor the soil toward maximizing the plant growth potential. Of course, there is a handy resource of composted manure available a short distance away, but she is talking about also adding some sand, too.
I’m just the muscle on this project. I’ll leave those decisions up to her for now.
Before calling it a day and heading in to shower, I snuck down to hook up the come-along winch to the pine tree stump to see if it would stand up straight.
Close enough for my purposes, of which I currently have none. Just seemed like something to do. I have a high suspicion it will tip again at the first trigger of high wind or excess moisture since the roots have all been thusly stressed and held for months in that previous lean.
That fact has me hesitant to plot any significant artistic endeavor for the stump until it has had time to settle in the upright position.
It is located beside Cyndie’s perennial garden, so carving it into a gnome seems like a great idea. Unfortunately, I don’t have any plan to learn how to carve a gnome out of a tree stump, so that most likely won’t happen.
If it stays standing for a year or so, I’ll have had plenty of time for inspiration to strike.
I’ll likely be busy fixing garden fencing in the meantime.
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Soil Sample
There are some places on our property where we have some really nice black dirt for top soil, but this isn’t one of them. This spot, on top of the ridge of our front field, is beneath a gate in the fence that was just completed. To connect the electric fence across the opening where there is a gate, they dig a trench and bury a wire. I was looking down at the filled-in trench and captured this shot to show the clay of our soil.
Relative Something 