Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["E. E. Mitchamore Jr" <emitch@att.net>]

I gotta tell you that 18" sounds like a real dream to us.  The soil here is 6" - 12" of poor clay on top of 500' of limestone.  Still, limestone is cracked and pretty porous.  Even without raised beds you can grow a garden.  With just 6" raised beds you can't tell that all that rock is down there.

 

E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.biz

----- Original Message -----

From: Liz

To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 9:24 PM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Growing in our area/ was no-till and onsite slaughter

At 03:48 PM 1/8/2008, you wrote:

>  However, I won't double-dig because the
>subsoil is only six inches down, and I have to build up instead.

I keep telling the local folk that decades of tractor plowing the
land I'm gardening now has created a permanent cement-like layer
about 18" down, and that's one reason I was using raised beds. The
response I got? "But if you had someone plow it for you, you wouldn't
have all that work to build raised beds!"

Sigh. I planted cardoon and jerusalem artichokes and some kind of
Chinese radish that's supposed to go down four or five feet. I'm
hoping those will at least help break up that subsoil layer.

Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com

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