It’s gardening season. I’ve noticed lots of folks still grow their own garden. However, many of us are too busy; many households have two money earners, which crowds their schedules. I think the folks that had gardens as part of their upbringing still plant and harvest gardens.
Folks who are successful at gardening work year round at it. When my parents moved to Arkansas back in the ‘70s my dad turn his backyard into a farm. He hauled cow manure from the local sale barn, added lime and worked hard to produce an amazing amount of food. He discovered his land got lots of water and being slightly down hill that kept him from planting as early as he liked and made the garden hard to work. So along the north side of his lot he installed a sub-drain about 18 inches deep, put in tile and gravel and with carpenter’s level ran the tile out to the curb.
He was raised in Illinois where field tiles are common on farmland. The result was the water ran off the tiles and down the street until it found a storm sewer drain. While visiting my dad I could not believe the amount of water he was shedding. It was so much water the city came out to see where the water line was leaking. He explained his drain system, they laughed.
He never again had the mud that would keep him out of his garden early in the season. Of course, his treatment of the ground gave him plenty of earthworms, they in turn made tunnels to let the rain soak in. His addition of ag lime was very important to this cycle. Back then several people raised earthworms for bait and I own a book on earthworms, just interested in the process.
The book said keeping the bedding pH at neutral was the way to raise earthworms and the instructions said to take frequent pH tests of the bedding with litmus paper. If it shows acidity, add ag lime and retest in a week. I interviewed some folks raising worms commercially and they showed me the same thing. So if you want worms in your garden to help you, simply add ag lime and work it in until litmus paper does not show acid.
Of course we have soil testing available to everyone through your county Extension or USDA Service Center. One of the fields on the farm I owned near Winslow, Ark., we spread 2 tons of lime per acre in the winter in preparation of sowing fescue. It was applied over the winter and we worked the ground up in the spring with a spring-tooth renovator. When I got off the tractor the first time to see what I was doing, I spotted all the earthworms I’d turned up. I knew it would make a great hay meadow with that many earthworms. It did but at the time I had no idea about the benefits of ag lime promoting them.
You can learn a lot about the land when you actually get out and work it. One time a man needed a poultry house cleaned out and gave us the litter. We had no spreader so we hauled in an old dump truck near the place we wanted to fertilize. We were all working and busy, so we managed to borrow a John Deere manure spreader and an old tractor with a loader to spread it in July. I know, wrong time of year, but we had a field so poor it grew nothing. We worked all weekend and got it spread. It rained that summer, so on Labor Day weekend I rode down to look at it. I stand 6 feet tall and the Purpletop grass seed heads in that field were up to my shirt pockets. Treat soil right and you can grow things.
God bless you, your family and America, Dusty Richards
