After waiting for what seemed like forever, our new BCS walk-behind tractor got delivered! So last Saturday we set out to prepare our soil for the new garden at the farm.
Cameron taught me the ropes of how to use the tractor and I started to plow the soil. Aside from a few large rocks we hit along the way the tractor did awesome! It was leaps and bounds better than the little tiller we had tested a few weeks ago.
It took me a while to get the hang of the tractor and gain some speed. At the end of the day, we had finished a 25×100 foot area but still have another 25×100 to go. We had added some sand, wood ash and a little bit of peat moss to mix in the soil.
The wood ash is a good choice to amend our soil because after getting our soil test back, I found the soil has too low a PH for vegetables and it was low in potassium. Wood ash will raise soil PH and add potassium as well as minerals.
We also have an endless supply of free wood ash since we heat our house with wood so that is a nice bonus!
After all the garden beds are prepped we will add compost on the top. The reason we aren’t mixing it into the soil is because it’s not fully broken down yet and has a lot of wood chips in it still.
Before we left the farm, I covered the whole garden area with the silage tarps because it was suppose to rain the next day. Well it rained and was cold for 3 days straight.
On Wednesday we went back out there to finish up the plowing. We took off the tarps and tried to plow some more but the soil was wet enough I could barely push the tractor through it and I was afraid it was really going to mess up the soil.
I left disappointed because we are now expecting another 2 days of rain over this weekend and won’t be able to do anything until the soil dries out next week. I guess this means I’m a real farmer now who is dependent on the weather!
In the home garden:
- Hilled up my potatoes and weeded.
- Picked more strawberries, asparagus, lettuce, green onions, and arugula
- In the kids garden they lost a few sunflower sprouts to cutworms. We are going to make rings to put around the base of their plants.
- It has been unusually cold and wet this year. I was checking my records from last year and we are about two weeks behind on harvests compared to last year. I am comparing my perennials like strawberries, asparagus and blueberries so it is pretty accurate.
