They recommend having more pictures than you think is necessary in articles but I tell you it is hard to stop and take pictures of everything you do but I did try to do that today to show y’all how little effort improved our soil and the way I transplant tomatoes to the garden. Two for one day! Disclaimer: This may upset those of a delicate balance. There are two distinct sects of gardeners: those who believe you must always till and till often and those who believe you should never till. I am here to tell you that some soil must be tilled at the beginning before it can become a no till situation, most especially if you live on a tight budget. Let’s dive into it.

For starters, you need to know what we are dealing with in our soil so that you will know there is hope for you too. Our soil here is thick, hard clay. Water runs right over it unless it is slowly sprinkled in and once it is wet it can suffocate the roots because it is exactly like wet clay for pottery. It is so hard and compact when dry you do indeed bounce when you fall on this ground and only the toughest of plants grow here. This clay would definitely make some hard bricks. Despite this my grandparents have used modern methods of tons of tilling and chemicals to grow a garden all my life. The soil in their garden is even harder and more pale than the photograph of a bare spot that is not chemically endowed. The soil in their garden is even uncomfortable for me to walk across it barefoot than across the gravel driveway. That is some hard dirt. This is why I would love to do an organic garden where it’s so fluffy and soft it never needs tilling but with this type of soil I found out last year it will not be like that right away. Unless, that is, you have a million dollars laying around for amendments. So where are we now with the soil? How did we get there? How much work was it? How much did it cost?

Where are we at in the soil journey? I am extremely pleased with the progress the soil has made in the last year. It drains at just the right speed, it is soft, it is a darker color than before, and it crumbles beautifully. The picture and video above were taken after it had been rained on three separate hard rains! Last year if it had rained before I got my plants in the ground I would have had to till or chop the ground to be able to dig in it. This is such improvement my hope of beautiful no-till may happen sooner than expected.

We did several things to get the soil condition improved and none of them were an extra expense for us, therefore, all the more recommended.

The first amendment was some aged cow manure from some friends. The garden was already planted so they dumped the manure into two piles for us and we spent several weeks taking turns scooping it into our wheel barrow and shoveling it on either side of the plants to act as mulch. We could tell the plants became darker and grew quicker after several rains and waters but so did the infamous wire grass! To top it off it was still so slick when wet it was impossible to walk in safely and painfully hard when dry in the walk ways between rows. I slid down a row one day leading our rooster into a laughing fit. Oh to have had a witness that wasn’t an animal. The wonderful addition of nutrient packed, aged manure improved the nutrients of this dense soil but did nothing for the texture of it. For that we needed carbon.

The second attempt at amending was tilling all the old plants under at the end of the season and then planting greens as a cover crop. The greens did not fair well even though I mulched them with oak leaves when we got record cold -30 degrees Fahrenheit for the week of Christmas. Which just lead to the giving up and relying completely on our third amendment. Adding these plants back to the soil may have returned some of the nutrients but not enough carbon still.

The third amendment was a mixture of wood chips/flakes or pine needles and leaves with the manure contribution from all of the twenty something chickens and quail we had at the time. The wood was pine and had to be purchased at seven dollars for a plastic bale shaped bag which was not the end of the world because it does last several weeks and it was only two bags until people started raking their leaves and pine needles and bringing them to the road to be taken away. Brandon would stop and pick up these bags on the way home from the city so they were free. Each time we emptied out the coop bedding into the wheel barrow we would empty it into a different pile in the garden then the chickens were nice enough to actually do a very professional job of scratching and spreading each pile evenly. By the first week of March the entire garden was covered in 2-3 inches of bedding and manure. On a dry, warm day I changed the oil in our family tiller and tilled all this under the surface of the garden. This sat under the surface for roughly 4-5 weeks to decompose into the soil before grandaddy came by and disced the garden on the franken-tractor. A few weeks after that I tilled it again and it was no trouble at all to till and it was beautiful and fluffy.

We immediately planted wildflower mix in a row at the front going horizontal across the whole garden to attract beneficial insects. We then planted green beans, Cherokee beans, wild goose peas, and purple hull peas. It rained that night and several times since for a wonderful display of inch tall sprouts in just 5 days!

The last row is an extra wide one where I am putting two tomatoes next to each other in little horizontal rows that are perpendicular to the long vertical rows everything else is in.

To make my row I left about 2 or 3 feet from my last pea row then put in 2 tomatoes roughly a foot or so apart. Then I repeated the process going up the garden until I ran out of plants.

I stripped the lower leaves and lay them sideways to determine where my hole would be dug to center the tops of the plants.

Put water directly in your hole and bury the root ball deep and also bury the stem up to the remaining leaves which results in this plant being buried underground much the way you see here. The stem will make tons of roots leading to a stronger and healthier plant.

Since they become little short plants after being buried I pinch the blossoms off if it has already started to blossom to encourage it to do some more growing before fruiting on the ground. Once the plant has become several feet tall I will go back and strip the lower leaves close to the ground again but this time to prevent pests and disease near the soil level.

Happy Gardening!