Tractor Saves The Day & Plans for Garden Flood Control
What would have taken me three days was over within 15 minutes thanks to a friendly neighbor with a tractor…
Thank you Elwood!
I still have to put about 200 lbs of lime on, get that dreaded tiller out there for another few passes, and then seed it with red clover. I’ll till the red clover at the end of summer and plant some winter rye to leave through the winter. That will get tilled in sometime in early spring of 2011 and then I’ll be ready to PLANT our first garden here on the farm.
In the meantime my compost pile and worm bins are hard at work making enough compost to mix in at some point.
It feels good to have a garden plan started. Of all of the projects we’ve done here it has mostly been cleaning up other people’s (former owners) junk, which is an entirely different feeling than doing something that moves you closer to self-sustainability.
The garden is in danger of flooding though. I had to choose whether to put it somewhere that could potentially flood Vs back closer to the woods where the deer would probably eat half of it. I chose to put it closer to the house, in view of our outdoor dog. The deer are going to go for it either way, but I feel like it is more in “our” territory than theirs. I have two plans for reducing the chance of my topsoil being washed away in a flood: #1 Take rocks from the bottom (under water) of the spring branch and put them against the sides. This will create some erosion control for the branch and with the rocks removed from under the water it should be able to “dig itself out” a little deeper, which should allow it to hold more water. It sounds good in theory at least. #2 Build a short (2 ft high) stone wall in an L-shape around the bottom and south side of the garden, which should make it more difficult for the water to overtake the garden and, if it does, should retain most of the top soil.
Stay tuned for updates on the garden. You’ll surely hear about it if I have an entire garden crop destroyed by a flood one year. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen. 
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Category: Gardening, The Transplants
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I’m so glad you decided to take the patient, cover crop route. In a way, I wish I had, although my green thumb can’t imagine spending a year without a garden.
I think you’ll get much higher yields in the long run this way!
My experience has been that a wall without mortar or chinking will not hold back the soil adequately. I recently helped replace a tiered flagstone patio that used railroad ties for the retaining walls. Over 10 years, the lowest level raised three inches over the flagstones.
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[...] From Virgin Ground Experiment Update [ 0 ] March 16, 2011 | Everett You may recall last year I posted about tilling up a garden from soil that was red clay below grass that had probably not been tilled in [...]