New Garden Spot, Maybe time to try Organic only.....

[coronabarb]

"Defender of tomatoes in my yard....."

Ha, ha, ha!!! He's adorable!

[harleysilo]

So my daughter and I decided last night we would check the drainage so we filled up some holes......5 hours later when I went to sleep they were still half full with the 1st filling of water LOL....
Well I filled up the holes, she helped lol....

[coronabarb]

"...I decided last night we would check the drainage..."

A shameless excuse to post adorable kid pics!

[dice]

That is some mighty slow drainage. I would be worried
about root rot in the rain.

You could dig out to the depth of a 5 gallon bucket,
pour a shovel full of gypsum in the bottom of the hole,
and mix it up with the clay with a big drill bit or something
(the kind used for drilling conduit holes in concrete, for
example). Eventually the gypsum will combine with the
clay and make larger sized particles that drain better.

Then mix the dirt you dug out with more gypsum, wood
chips or shavings (so there will still be something left next
year besides silt and clay), compost or manure, and blood
meal (an organic high nitrogen fertilizer to feed bacteria
trying to break down the wood chips, so that they don't
eat all of the nitrogen in the hole, leaving nothing for
the tomatoes.)

Then use a regular organic tomato or vegetable food
in addition to all of that mixed into the top foot of the hole
to feed the tomato plants. (Lots of people like Espoma
TomatoTone for that, although it is not available everywhere.)

If you have acidic, low pH soil, mix a cup of dolomite lime
into the top foot of the hole, too.

Greensand is supposed to loosen heavy clay soils. You
probably would need at least $50 worth of it to have
enough to make a difference with that many holes.

Looking at all that, it might be less work to build a long
raised bed over top of all of it and fill it with a mixture
of horse manure and leaves. Less digging, less
amending of the soil required to get it to drain. You can
check Craig's List in your area for free manure, free ground
tree mulch, free bagged or piles of leaves, etc. (You need a
pickup truck or small utility trailer and something to tow it
with for these.)

[rodger]

I will give you my 2 cents. I live in South Carolina in the piedmont just NW of Columbia in good old red clay. I would not have any other soil. Clay when baked in the sun is hard doesn't necessarily drain well but as you can tell by your grass it will grow plants. Clay soils contain loads of nutrients and don't dry out so quick as sandy soils. I am a certified Organic grower and I run an organic heirloom vegetable buisiness and I grow certified organic seeds for seed companies. First I will say never haul in a load dirt . You are just hauling in someone elses problem. Why do you think it is being hauled away in the first place. All your soil needs is ammending with lots of organic matter. If your throwing out grass clippings, leaves and your vegetable scapes your throwing away the cheapest and best soil ammendment there is available and just filling up the local land fill. Never use ground wood chips bark etc. These are too woody. woody materials leach nitrogen from the soil when they decompose starving your plants. If you have a need to buy something buy Mushroom compost . I use this in my own flower beds and in container plants mixed 50/50 with potting soil. Use about 1 bag of mushroom compost for every three plants tilled well into the soil. But a lawn mower bag of grass clippings and some shredded leaves from last fall will be outstanding mixed into each hole or if the leaves were already sent to the dump last fall the grass clippings alone will be fine. By you pictures the holes appear small anything less than 30inches wide and a foot deep is not big enough. for the space in between I would cover with at least 6inches of some kind of mulch out to a width of 3ft feet from center or a 6ft wide bed. Use yours and your neighbors grass clippings this summer covering the area over and over this adds nitrogen, phosporus and potassium along with other nutrients to the soil, holds in moisture, regulates temperature, deters weeds and keeps dirt of the leaves and the dry clippings are neat and clean looking. Hay mulch, pine straw and shredded leaves are also good. next fall turn all this under then start over again in the spring. In each hole add a handful of gypsum for added calcium and a cup of bone meal for phosporus work into the 30inch hole. Phosphorus is needed for blooms and fruit, nitrogen for growth but with too much nitrogen you get too much plant and not enough friut and too much plant leads to foliar diseases due to stress and poor air circulation. The next thing I noticed is you said 17 plants in 55 ft. This is too close unless your planting Commercial releases such as celebrity early girl etc. These plants are semi determinate and will not become too large, however anything else can get huge especially heirlooms, and with our heat and humidity if you can not walk around the plant at maturity with out touching the plants they are too close and will sucumb to foliar disease and damage. When the plants are planted I soak each plant with a fish fertilizer, I use Neptunes harvest 2-4-1( always choose an organic fertilizer that the center number is at least twice the first number). Then I plant and add no fertilizer until the first fruit set about 6 weeks later . Then every month I use the Neptunes 2-4-1 fish fertilizer, this adds a little nitrogen and other nutrients over a long period when the plants need it and not all at once in the spring when a small plant can't use it and it just leaches into the ground and becomes run off polluting streams etc. The Next thing I would add is proper support. Those little conical cages sold as tomato cages in Big box stores will in no way every support a tomato that is worth growing. Use a temporary streach of fence, concrete wire cages anything that is anchored into the ground to hold it up like a metal T-post and is at least 5ft tall. The final thing I will add is a controversial topic but I believe you will find that with our heat and humidity if a tomato plant is allowed to grow on its own it will become a tangled mess of vine with little productivity and will be dead by the end of July if not earlier. So I prune. Our friends up in the northern reaches of this country don't neccesarily need to do this I can't say but I have gardened my whole life coming up on 50 years and I have grown organically for the last decade and I encourage anyone to come out and see my garden and a well maintained plant is healthy, stress free and loaded with tomatoes. I remove all suckers which will grow in between each and every leaf. And if you look at how a tomato grows you will notice that evey time it blooms the plant splits forming two new laterial branches. If growing on a single stake or in a large container never allow but 1-2 branches. If using a fence or large cage system I allow no more than 4-6 branches after that each time it blooms remove one of the lateral branches leaving only the 4-6 main stems to grow and produce tomates, keeping the limbs tucked inside the cage or as the limb grows push it through the fence to weave the plant out in a flat fan like manner across the fence this gives excellent airflow requires no tying which can damage stems and will produce loads of tomatoes. It takes me a couple of hours once a week to remove all suckers pinch out excess laterals and weave branches on the fence for about 250 plants. So less than 30 min a week for the home gardener and a good thick bed of mulch with lots of organic material tilled in a wide 30inch hole and you can produce 20 plus pounds of tomatoes per plant over the season up till frost. The final thing is water, always keep the leaves dry and never over head water anything it wastes a valuable resource that those in Georgia should very well know by now. Thoroughly soak the plants at the base about once a week if the rain is less than an inch and if the ground feels dry. Then throw out your sprayer and any thing you felt the need to buy to prevent this and combat that because all they do is buy time and destroy the enviroment even the organic sprays kill the good bugs and copper sprays for fungus are a heavy metal which over time will poison the soil and are restricted and require permission to use on an organic farm. I would rather prune a little, mulch a lot and enjoy my garden rather than spraying for this and treating for that. A well maintained, healthy plant doesn't get sick so stay away from the stores and those so called curall products and set back and enjoy a real tomato sandwhich this summer. And make plans to attend the third annual tomato tasting hosted by me in Little Mountain SC on July 19 at 1200 noon with a tour of my garden from 2-4pm. Rodger Winn

[harleysilo]

Originally Posted by coronabarb

"...I decided last night we would check the drainage..."

A shameless excuse to post adorable kid pics!

lol busted lol 15 characters

[harleysilo]

Okay so this weekend I'm picking up a rototiller that my dad is giving me, it's like 30 years old. Anyways given that, and all the advice here what do you all think about me tilling up the area 3-4' wide and the length of the row. Removing as much or the clay and replacing with the dirt I can get from a local nursery. I read the opinion that "they are giving the dirt away cause they don't want it" but I look at it as they are making it (quality) to sell it, so it must be "worth it" and better than what is in my yard.
I also thought I could take the old post hole digger and dig a hole in the middle of each plant location and then fill that hole with the pile of rubble (bricks, small pieces of concrete and cinder block) that I have sitting by my house (it's left over from demolishing a half finished basement fireplace by previous owner). The idea would be to create small "dry well" for water to go.....when it rains a lot.....

[TZ-OH6]

Clay isn't too bad if you can mix in a lot of organic matter to keep it from sticking back together. Have you thought about double-digging the entire row and placing the sod-top layer at the bottom? and mix in a bunch of straw, peatmoss, compost etc into the clay on top. That would give you a deep bed as well as a bit of a raised bed. If your yard has any slope you could put in a drain pipe along the bottom.



I'm against the idea of well holes with gravel/stone. The clay filters in fast and clogs the spaces. We had something similar done to our back yard (a trench filled with gravel to catch runnoff) they didn't put in a drain pipe in the gravel or out the end of the trench so the trench just filled up and the back yard still became a pond every time it rained hard. I spend a week digging down at the end of the trench, and dug a ditch for the water to run out of the gravel. Also, the clay had more or less infiltrated most of the gravel and plugged it up.

[dice]

Note: the soil needs to be dry when you rototill it.

If you just dig out the clay a foot or two deep and
replace it with trucked-in topsoil, what you will have
is a canal full of mud whenever it rains hard. I would
leave the clay there (as a kind of nutrient sponge) and
till copious amounts of gypsum and organic matter
into it (compost, horse manure, leaves, grass clippings,
sawdust, hay, straw, whatever you can find; add some
blood meal or fish meal if adding straw, sawdust, shavings,
or wood chips, to compensate for the high carbon-nitrogen
ratio).

This one guy in Georgia had packed clay, and he just
skipped tilling or digging it. Instead he covered the
area he wanted to garden in with newspapers, then
piled a foot of organic matter on top (compost, manure,
leaves, grass clippings, etc), and he just keeps adding
to the top layer every year.

Another post in the same thread (on another forum)
recommended 4 lbs gypsum per square yard per 6"
of soil depth for heavy clay soils. So if you wanted
to go 2' deep, that would be 16 lbs of gypsum per
square yard of area in the bed that you were improving.
That is a lot of bags of gypsum, but at least it is cheap.

(That discussion started out with a question about how
to use compost and morphed into a discussion about
dealing with heavy clay soils:

http://www.gardenerscorner.org/subject069317.htm
)

[harleysilo]

Originally Posted by TZ-OH6

Clay isn't too bad if you can mix in a lot of organic matter to keep it from sticking back together. Have you thought about double-digging the entire row and placing the sod-top layer at the bottom? and mix in a bunch of straw, peatmoss, compost etc into the clay on top. That would give you a deep bed as well as a bit of a raised bed. If your yard has any slope you could put in a drain pipe along the bottom.



I'm against the idea of well holes with gravel/stone. The clay filters in fast and clogs the spaces. We had something similar done to our back yard (a trench filled with gravel to catch runnoff) they didn't put in a drain pipe in the gravel or out the end of the trench so the trench just filled up and the back yard still became a pond every time it rained hard. I spend a week digging down at the end of the trench, and dug a ditch for the water to run out of the gravel. Also, the clay had more or less infiltrated most of the gravel and plugged it up.

I still have to get rid of the debris, but yes it might not work for very long, maybe a season....I very well could do a drain of sorts, I have plenty of 4" pipe that would just need holes drilled in one side .....let me think about that...yard does slope.....

[harleysilo]

Originally Posted by dice

N
If you just dig out the clay a foot or two deep and
replace it with trucked-in topsoil, what you will have
is a canal full of mud whenever it rains hard. I would
leave the clay there (as a kind of nutrient sponge) and
till copious amounts of gypsum and organic matter
into it (compost, horse manure, leaves, grass clippings,
sawdust, hay, straw, whatever you can find; add some
blood meal or fish meal if adding straw, sawdust, shavings,
or wood chips, to compensate for the high carbon-nitrogen
ratio).
http://www.gardenerscorner.org/subject069317.htm
)

I hear what you are saying, but isn't adding all that stuff to the clay pretty much the same are removing the clay and putting in dirt. I can't change the whole yard's dirt composition, so really if I am planting subsurface (i.e. no-raised bed) then I'm going to have drainage problems regardless because the only design option is to plant in a big clay pot.

[dice]

I hear what you are saying, but isn't adding all that stuff to the clay pretty much the same are removing the clay and putting in dirt. I can't change the whole yard's dirt composition, so really if I am planting subsurface (i.e. no-raised bed) then I'm going to have drainage problems regardless because the only design option is to plant in a big clay pot.

I am just thinking that mixing into the clay instead
of replacing it makes a less defined boundary between
the original clay and the garden bed, so there may be less
of the swimming pool effect than what you would get with
digging a hole and filling it with something else.

Putting a drainage pipe under the bed would be
a good idea, it is just a lot of work (but then all
of these suggestions are that.) People up here
often have to do that around houses and so on
(a lot of clay in the subsoil; leaky basements, etc).
Usual practice is to dig a trench, lay down a bed
of gravel, set perforated drain pipe on top of that,
fill in with gravel around the pipe, then fill the dirt
back in on top.

Since you have a long row there, you could split it
into thirds and do each third a different way: 1/3 dug
out and replaced with topsoil; 1/3 clay amended with
gypsum and organic matter; 1/3 raised bed of organic
matter on top of the sod.

Then see at the end of the year which way produced
the best for the least work. You might need to let it
go two or three years that way, to get a real idea of
how the different methods perform over time (how
much followup work do you need to do each fall
and spring to keep each method working well, based
on what changes occurred in the soil over the year).

I get the impression that popular opinion is that the raised
bed is the least work to get satisfactory vegetable beds in
places with heavy clay soil and slow drainage.

There is one other option that no one mentioned: the "raised
bucket". This is a per plant variation on a raised bed. Cosmic
had these pictures last year of rows of what looked like
5-gallon paint buckets on top of a recently cleared bed.
The buckets had the bottoms removed and were filled with
a mix of compost and topsoil, with a tomato plant in each
bucket. The roots could grow freely out into the soil below
the buckets, so they could take advantage of the water and
nutrient holding ability of the soil below the buckets, but they
still had 5 gallons per plant of top-grade soil on top that was
easy to root in and had good drainage, because it was raised
above the surrounding grade.

[feldon30]

If you have hard packed clay, then amending it ad nauseum will not help because when it rains, then you will have a bathtub of good soil that stays wet. When soil fails the water drainage test, I reach for the tried and true raised bed.

There is nothing saying you cannot till and try to work the soil below the raised bed. Eventually, if you keep adding good amendments and lots of organic matter, you will improve the clay below your raised beds. My best success has been, without a doubt, the 4' x 8' raised bed I built on top of the previous homeowner's gardening spot. As I was digging down, the soil was much different than the rest of the yard. It was very loose and well-draining, and I found scraps of landscape barriers. So far, everything I have planted in that bed has done exceptionally well.

[harleysilo]

I had previously thought of using a couple rolls of roofing material I have, they are 3' by 30'. Cut out holes for the plants. Roll out material and plant. It is white material but I could paint it red. It would prevent rain from filling my "clay pots" with too much water.........

[Leroy]

We have had a few people around here mound the clay soil with a some compost. Then put down a soaker hoze. Then cover it with black plastic. When they get to mutch rain it runs off and they can control the water. I have never tried it myself.