Starting a new garden / reclaiming an old one

[reed]

The folks who own the basically abandoned farm across the road are letting me borrow a spot that I want to use primarily for a nice big corn patch. It is 36' by 110' running almost straight North / South. The picture is looking North. It has a slight slope to the East. 
The history of it is that it was a garden until approximately 45 year ago. After that it was just part of the yard for the old house that still stands just to the left of the picture. When I moved here I mowed it for the old lady that lived there until she died about 20 years ago. Then a fellow bailed hay from it until maybe 5 years ago.   It has just grown up since then.
I mowed it down a few days ago and chopped out the cedar and wild roses, they will try to grow back I'm sure. Yesterday I set the mower all the way down and mowed it again so this is what it looks like now. 




I read on Sustainable Seed Company web site about something they called bio-drilling, using radishes to penetrate the soil to prepare it for corn so I ordered some.  I am not going to try to till it deep, just scratch it up enough with the tiller to plant the radishes as soon as they arrive. If they don't have time to grow much I will plant them again early next spring and then till them out when its time for the corn. 
Hopefully that will work pretty good but still wonder if I need to do more to improve it. I will be getting a soil test and see just what they say about it but don't really want to add chemicals and I don't have any where near enough chicken poop. 
Any suggestions on natural (and cheap, I already spent plenty on seeds) ways to improve the soil would be greatly appreciated. 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Good work on that new garden!

I love growing in soil that has recently been converted from fallow ground. Corn thrives. The perennial grasses can be a pain. The weed seed load is heavy, but those die easily if handled as small seedlings.

[kazedwards]

The radishes I think are intended to be winter killed and then decompose which aerates the soil. I have been thinking about trying it as well because it supposedly helps clay soils a lot. Good luck! I look forward to hearing how it turns out.

[reed]

Yes, I think so but not being able to get them in until mid to late September I don't know how big they can get till they freeze out. Hopefully they can take some frost and will grow at least some before a hard freeze, that often doesn't happen until at least November.
No matter how big they get it should help some. If it freezes sooner I will plant again in March or April and use them to do more of the drilling and hopefully crowd out weeds. This soil is also heavy clay so I might throw in some turnips too. I'v used them for winter cover crops and they work pretty good.
When its time to plant the corn I thought I would mow and till one pass for each row and just leave the radishes and turnips between. When the radishes start competing for light and water I'll just mow them down.
I'v dealt with the perennial grasses before. There is even a thankfully small amount of Johnson Grass. If any one doesn't know what that is, lucky you, if you do, then enough said.

[Drahkk]

You are using daikon radishes? Kazedwards is right; they're intended to break deep into the soil and then decompose, serving to break the ground in lieu of a big tractor with a disc. How far north are you? Turnips don't always winter kill here; sometimes they have to be disced or tilled under to clear the area in spring. If it gets hot enough for them to really grow, I'd also suggest cowpeas between rows of corn, especially one of the wilder, heavy vining types like Iron and Clay, Red Ripper, or Georgia Long. Plant them thick and they can really help choke out weeds, as well as add nitrogen for the corn.

[reed]

Yes, I am using Daikons, I have never grown them before and am excited to try them out. They sound better than turnips, better at reaching deep and breaking up the soil and they die out when it gets really cold, that would be nice. Turnips almost always live through the winter and can be in the way the next spring. I read these radishes take about 45 days and they can take some frost and light freezes so I hope to get by with planting them in mid Sept.
Thanks for the tip about cowpeas. I have never grown them before but will give them a try, it does get plenty hot here and plenty dry most years, 90's are more and more common. I am in the extreme SE of Indiana about three miles from the Ohio River but 400' above it so it isn't the same climate at all when it comes to gardens.
I have even thought about trying to use bush beans under the corn, I have lots of seed I won't be using otherwise.

[Drahkk]

I suggested cowpeas mainly because they can often be bought in bulk fairly cheap, and are not fussy about growing conditions. Iron and Clay in particular is often sold as a cover crop. If you already have the seed, though, bush beans should work fairly well as long as you plant them thickly enough to choke out weeds.

I had another thought. Whether you use beans or peas, you'll want enough sun to get to the shorter plants so they can do the job for which you're planting them. To that end, you might want to plant your corn in mounds or clusters rather than rows. Renee's Garden suggests 5' between mounds for a 3 sisters planting. Of course that includes winter squash mounds between corn and pole bean mounds, but the spacing should still be about right even if you're just using beans. The point is to allow sunlight to the plants between corn stalks.

[copse]

Sept 14, 2014 0:59:31 GMT -5 Drahkk said:

I suggested cowpeas mainly because they can often be bought in bulk fairly cheap, and are not fussy about growing conditions. Iron and Clay in particular is often sold as a cover crop. If you already have the seed, though, bush beans should work fairly well as long as you plant them thickly enough to choke out weeds.

I had another thought. Whether you use beans or peas, you'll want enough sun to get to the shorter plants so they can do the job for which you're planting them. To that end, you might want to plant your corn in mounds or clusters rather than rows. Renee's Garden suggests 5' between mounds for a 3 sisters planting. Of course that includes winter squash mounds between corn and pole bean mounds, but the spacing should still be about right even if you're just using beans. The point is to allow sunlight to the plants between corn stalks.

I did 5' mound distance last summer, and it provided insufficient sun to whatever was growing below.  The squash plants which produced, did so either at the edges of each 10' by 10'  3 sisters bed, or by spreading out past the edges into the surrounding grass.  Both beans and squash plants rotted to some extent from the environment.  I'd be interested in hearing from people who tried this in environments that aren't overly hot, and have decent rainfall.

I also had daikons, which I planted around the edges of the 3 sisters beds.  These however did not rot, and after pushing themselves up out of the soil, and then going to seed, turned into cardboardy husks.  However, their seeds have spread into the grass outside the beds, and have since germinated, so will be curious if they stay in the ground or push themselves up again.

[Drahkk]

Gotcha. Can't say I've had any different results, as I've never tried a real 3 sisters planting myself. I just know anything I plant between corn rows struggles until I remove the stalks and let some sun in.

Has anyone else had better luck?

[reed]

Thanks for the info about the radishes, thought I would upload some pics of how it is progressing. I should have put this first, it is what it looked like before I started.

 

Like I said before it is heavy clay under this grass. Next is what it looks like after being tilled just a couple inches deep. I decided to leave the dry grass to maybe help slow erosion especially if the radishes don't take or do well. Also I was just to lazy to rake it all up.



And a close up of the soil with the ground up grass, it don't look too bad but I think I probably should rake it out smooth before tossing out the radish seeds.
 


Last picture, it is hard to see in the other pictures but there is a small spot in the middle toward the upper end that I mowed around. That's because I am not the only one using this ground.



There are lots of these guys around in the rafters of barns and under eves but this is the first time I have ever seen them in such a wild condition.  When I pass by with the mower or tiller they all perk up and spread their wings but they don't bother anything. I'm taking it as a good omen.

Next step besides planting the radishes is to get the fence up, just hope I have enough on hand, won't have anything without it cause of the deer. The main goal of this project is producing corn seed for the next year, so I'm not concerned if what ever I plant for cover under the corn produces or not. I just want it to help slow down the return of whatever that grass  is, I'm sure mowing and tilling didn't kill it. 

[reed]

Yesterday it started raining before I got home from work. Also my radish seeds were in the mail box when I got here so I did something I have never done before, I scattered some of them in the rain. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to rake the ground before hand. It didn't rain a lot and if it isn't too muddy I think I will try to rake it a little when I get home today and scatter some more. The seeds I scattered yesterday surely can't have sprouted yet so I don't think raking should disturb them to much. If it is too muddy I am just going to scatter more any way and maybe some turnips too and see how it works out. 

[steev]

I think scattering, then raking a tad, should serve you well.

[reed]

I hope so, the deed is done. It wasn't too wet the next day so I raked it lightly and threw out the rest of my seeds. I wish I hadn't done that as I didn't think to save any to plant next spring, guess I'll have to order more, especially if it looks like they do the trick.  It occurred to me if this works I can just plant some in the spring too and let them go to seed and start the process over. 
Could it be, a no or at least low till method of starting a garden? 

[MikeH]

If you have heavy clay, you might want to think about agricultural gypsum. It'll open up your soil without altering the pH. As Joseph says, you'll have quite a seed bank to deal with. An allelopathic cover crop would help. This is good article - www.extension.org/pages/18524/how-cover-crops-suppress-weeds.

We use inoculated bush peas early in the spring before we're sure that the last frost is finished since they can handle a light frost. We want the established before anything else gets going. We chop and drop before they go to flower to capture all of the nitrogen for the soil. Then we follow with buckwheat which grows really fast and blocks the light available to germinating weed seeds. We chop and drop before it goes to flower if we are planning to plant where it's growing. If we don't plan to plant until next year, we'll let it go to seed and suppress the buckwheat plants that have resulted from self-seeding with an early pea crop.

We're starting to see wireworms so we'll introduce brown mustard into the cover crop rotation next year.

[reed]

It has been two weeks since planting the radish and not a single drop of rain, this what the field looks like now





The grass is back especially at the north end but I expected that. It isn't a really bad type of grass, tills out pretty easy and the radishes are up despite it and the lack of rain.



Now for the fence before the deer find it, and to figure out what kind of corn to plant, at least I have some time to ponder that. 

Putting up pictures is fun but it is a lot of tedious little steps, I may go to mostly written updates except for special things.