Hello,
I grew up in and near San Francisco in a Suburban environment. My grandfather spoke little English from Italy, but made sure we always had a veg. garden in the backyard as he did. Today, you would call my very large family "Makers".... we just like making stuff and became fearless on the scope and size of tasks we were willing to tackle.
Years later, I found a piece of
land near Petaluma where we've been rebuilding the structures and systems completely from a totally neglected house and barn on 3 acres. Most of our relatives were not gifted with vivid imaginations so were horrified at the train-wreck hoarders property we purchased. They could not look past the mountains of trash, cars, garbage, etc, and see the potential. Just this year (10 years into it) finishing up the new barn and FINALLY getting around to landscaping this otherwise mostly treeless patch of weedy clay.
8 years ago, I took a friends advice on how the locals plant orchards and mounded up some of the clay, (in the backyard) blended in a few pickup truck loads of horse manure, heaped it into 2' tall by 4' wide mounds, and placed several fruit
trees on them.
Trees that did not get consumed by gophers are still there, but not thriving except my Peach tree. The Cherry-Plum, Cherry, and Apricot trees are essentially fruitless. I suspect they
should have been planted in pairs, so I'll fix that. The peach tree loved this last winters historically high rain fall, and rewarded us with flawless perfumey cling-peaches. The only amendments to this soil was horse manure 7 years ago and I've laid down a 6" thick layer of ground up trees/wood chips to hold moisture in and keep weeds at bay.
Meanwhile, in the main field, almost 2 acres in size, I've been ripping the soil with a 20" "talon" to break up the Adobe Clay. My 55HP John Deere
tractor is crying uncle to break through this virtual
concrete, but with shallow, then deeper passes, I'm able to bust it up. The field is roughly 250' x 400' and I'm breaking up a 30' wide "picture frame" around the perimeter. My leech field is in the center of the field, so I don't want tree-roots anywhere near it to prevent root-clogging and having mysteriously delicious fruit......
The plan is to add gypsum, and organic cow-manure-derived
compost and blend it, then throw down a radish and nitrogen fixing cover crop variety to hold the soil and break it up so it hopefully drains.
My soil profile was revealed when 10 test trenches were dug in that field to find drainage for a new leech field for the septic system. A very consistent 36" thickness of Adobe Clay with rocks from baseball size to large watermelons was uncovered. Below that was "disinegrating shale", a mixture of sand and fossil-infused soft rock, which varied in thickness from a few inches to about 18" in some areas. Under the "Shale" was a very thick, hard, sticky tan colored clay with NO rocks in it. The teeth of the excavator could not penetrate it and simply burnished the "hardpan" clay.
I was not planning to mound the soil this time. It's
alot of tractoring to do that for roughly 1000' along the fenceline. Here in Sonoma County, I'm following the "standard practice" applied to vineyards for new grapevines, or replacement.
is this a bad gamble?
Is horse manure typically as filled with dewormers as I've been warned on YouTube and should be avoided? There are many
local organic dairies and am hoping to put about 100 yards of composed droppings into the tilled soil? Advice? Warnings? Laughter?
Thanks
Brian