thinking of throwing in the towel next yr or doing a no brainer crop

[newfoundland]

Here's an old tip that you may already know. If you don't have room for a compost heap, dig a long trench in your vegetable bed about one foot deep. Put vegetable peelings, egg shells, annual weeds tea leaves etc in the trench in newspaper and cover with soil. Work your way along the trench doing this. This will decompose sufficiently in the winter to enrich and lighten the soil. All greedy vegetables can be planted straight into it. This method was used during WW2 in Britain to do away with the unnecessary waste of space that a compost heap made. Also it was free and readily available. Over the years your soil will improve, but never deep dig clay, better to use this method. Good luck.

 

[smilingcat]

Feed the soil to feed the plant!

If your soil is really bad, setup a raised bed preferably 2 feet in height. Minimum is 12 inches. Last thing you want is a dead-panning at the bottom of the root ball. Since this is your home garden, raised bed is an option. I would highly recommend it in your situation.

If you want the plant to help break up the soil, plant buckwheat, fava bean, sweet pea, even corn with its massive tap root will help push organics into the ground. Problem with corn is that its a very heavy feeder of nitrogen. You should plant crimson clover. Crimson clover! not any other kind of clover. Crimson clover will grow even in winter. Plant green manure NOW and mow them down into the ground when you are ready to plant your seedling in spring time. Things I like to plant are mixture of vetch, crimson clover, buckwheat, and fava beans. I plant at rate about 2-3x what is recommended into poor soil or in places where I have lot of weed. fava bean and sweet peas can effectively choke out even crab grass. To help kick start the over wintering plant, I would heavily fertilize it with nitrogen, phosphate, potassium and lime. I would also add sand.

If you go to Johhny's seeds, they have green manure mix. They have lot of good info for back yard gardeners all the way up to commercial growers. I've bought twine for my tomatoes, tomato clips, seeds of all sort. Bit too far for me to buy agribon from them... Agribon is something you might consider using in winter to help with soil building over the winter. Agribon is a row cover.

Oh I would also add about 12" of compost to your clay soil. don't worry, compost will reduce to much smaller volume by spring time. Compost will help break up the clay soil. Sand will help break up the clay and will help with drainage.

Let nature help you with rehabilitating bad soil.

If you are into deep organic method of growing:

try Johnny's seeds, Peaceful Vally farm and garden supply, abundant seed life. Victory seeds. My drip system comes from Drip works. Do a search on any of the name listed.

Books you might be interested are by Elliot Colman. There are also lots of other organic gardening book. Composting is mostly common sense so don't think you need a book on it. Seems bit dumb to me but hey... BTW, we do grow veggies over the winter in Pacific Northwest where its mostly cloudy, wet, and cold most of the winter. Elliot Colman has his farm in Maine and continues to produce veggies all winter long without resorting to gas/electric heated greenhouse.

one year to throw in the towel is doing a dis-service to your garden effort. Some farmers lose two sometimes three years in a row. soil conditioning is ever going effort and never stops. Start up may be hard but its all about the soil. give it another two, three years at your garden and you will be rewarded. Grow simple things like zucchini and tomatoes. These two are usually the ones home gardeners have most success. With hard clay avoid root crop. Onion, carrots, garlic, turnip, beets, potato...

Don't give up yet!!! Persevere!!

 

[milo1108]

Yea I wouldn't give up on it either. It just takes a lot of hard work. Instead of doing anything in the backyard as far as gardening, I just decided to go ahead and do a raised bed. I wanted to have something to grow in the winter and I am somewhat experimenting with it. I would like to say though that the best things I have ever had grow were some beautiful sunflowers that started growing in my front yard before I got the soil fixed. (Come to find out there was a leak under the house and thats why they grew so well)

 

[booker81]

I don't use a composter, but rather toward the end of the year when weeding and culling out plants, I just pull and leave them to die in the garden paths. Early spring, I either empty the chicken coop out, or get a truckload of horse manure (from horses that are stalled, fed top quality hay and grain - minimal weed seeds), and just dump it on top of the garden, spread it a bit, and leave it for a few months. A month before planting time, I till it. I till it once again right before planting. Gives it time for the chicken poo to be less hot, and after a few years of doing this, I've raised up the garden area about 6", and it's about 12-16" inches of really, really rich soil. Under neath that is clay though, but I've planted on a slope - the water pools about 10 feet from the edge of the garden (Of course, that runoff makes for some crazy thick tall grass that hubby swears at when he mows the lawn!)

Most of our compost type veggie scraps and the like go to the chickens. Once everything has produced all I want, I'll just till that down as well.

 

[newfoundland]

Potatoes are wonderful for breaking up heavy clay soil.

 

[Eowyn2]

Some great suggestions here. I live over on the Western Slope, so I feel your pain with the heavy alkaline clay. At the very least give it another year or two of what you're doing. As a gardening friend of mine says, "first year sleep, second year creep, third year LEAP". Sounds like you are in the throes of sleeping and creeping right now.

 

[milo1108]

Broccoli does pretty well in clay too. I think that was another plant that grew up on its own as well. I've had the same broccoli plant coming back for 3 years now.

 

[kmatt87]

Broccoli does pretty well in clay too. I think that was another plant that grew up on its own as well. I've had the same broccoli plant coming back for 3 years now.

i didn't know that broccoli was a perennial

 

[mickey328]

It's not...once it flowers, it dies. Milo probably has a volunteer...and those are always good

 

[milo1108]

Mine hasn't died yet. It continuously grows and all the plants have flowered. Maybe I have a defect one. lol