TOPIC: Followup on loosening of the soil

Rootman,
You and I mentioned that we felt that our soil was too tight and Tn and I mentioned that we thought we had seen some good results from using Gypsum regularly. Since I have finished planting seeds from my older plants I thought that I would try something that I found to be real helpful many years ago with my peach trees. I used a garden spade to push the tines into the ground as deep as I could and then tilt the handle backwards and forwards to bust the ground loose. I went all the way around the drip line and then applied fertilizer or lime. It really helped with the growth of the trees.
Today. I marked off rows in my woodlots where I felt that I did not get good germination this Spring and did the same thing breaking the soil up about 6- 8 inches deep. After finishing the row I went back and started again placing the spade in the row I had made 90 degrees to the angle I had just done. This really broke the soil up and loosened the ground real well. After doing that I spread Gypsum real heavily all up and down the rows that I had broken up. This should allow the Gypsum to wash down in the ground. I had found a fellow a couple of weeks ago that has Wild Tennessee ginseng woods grown roots and I am going to plant them in these rows as soon as they are dormant. I will place good topsoil and bone meal followed up with the fertilizer recommendations that UT gave me on the soil samples. This is just one approach to getting looser soil and better growth and probably the most labor intensive. I just wanted to try to get down deeper than a cultivator or disc to get the best root growth that I could. We'll see how this turns out. Let me know what approach you try.
Hugh

Hugh,
That sounds like a winner. You can bet I'll be throwing plenty of gypsum down and deep.

rootman

How much decomposing leaf clutter do you have there? A lot?

wELL whitjr,
Probably not as much as you have after that tremendous cleanup that you did, but the average woodlot type collection. In a few weeks there will be about 4 inches across most of the woodland floor. I used marker flags so I'll know where the rows are located if leaf fall takes place before I get the rootlets planted. Almost everyone on here has tried some little version of their best attempt at getting things to work better for them and this is just one of them for me.
I think my best home grown attempt this year was my method of irrigating my plants. That has worked out better than I thought it would. This was only my second year at picking berries and the first year produced about 50 berries. This season produced about 800 hundred and might have gone close to 1000 except for some late rodent damage.
Hugh

Hugh,

800 berries is pretty good considering the second year.
I really don't know how many berries I've picked so far because I stuck them back in the ground, which was from my wild simulated crops.

Now on my caged area I am just starting to get a few ripe berries. Maybe 40 berries.
I have 95 plants out of the original 125 plants due to cut worms and some plants didn't come up. I'm hoping the roots are still there or most of them anyway. Actually I think the plot will hold 200 plants and then I've got another area in the woods close to the house that will probably hold 200 seed bearing plants already worked up.
I think my caged plants will produce around 6 or 700 berries total. Maybe.

rootman

Rootman,
Your seed bearing setup sounds real similar to mine in size. I'm curious as to how you worked up the new plot in the woods that is about ready to plant? I know you can do some light discing or some other methods of breaking the ground up in the wood land, but roots and rocks are always a barrier or a way to tear up equipment. That's really why I chose the garden spade method. It's a killer physically but it keeps me in shape and really gets the grounds loosened up down deep. It would be great to be able to subsoil the ground , but roots would not allow that.

I don't know if you are seeing any of this or not, but besides some rodent damage, I'm seeing some seed abortion on my late Kentucky plants. I'm not sure what to say about this.
Hugh

Hugh Hartsell wrote:

I don't know if you are seeing any of this or not, but besides some rodent damage, I'm seeing some seed abortion on my late Kentucky plants. I'm not sure what to say about this.

I'd say, \"@#*%@*$^!!\"

LOL, sorry, but I couldn't help myself!

Hugh This idea sounds good, getting the seed deep in the ground 2 inches or so is the answer.
We plant this deep in our plots.

Guy

Hugh Hartsell wrote:

Rootman,
Your seed bearing setup sounds real similar to mine in size. I'm curious as to how you worked up the new plot in the woods that is about ready to plant? I know you can do some light discing or some other methods of breaking the ground up in the wood land, but roots and rocks are always a barrier or a way to tear up equipment. That's really why I chose the garden spade method. It's a killer physically but it keeps me in shape and really gets the grounds loosened up down deep. It would be great to be able to subsoil the ground , but roots would not allow that.

I don't know if you are seeing any of this or not, but besides some rodent damage, I'm seeing some seed abortion on my late Kentucky plants. I'm not sure what to say about this.
Hugh

I worked up 4 rows with a large mattock then raked dirt, leaves and all in ridges like you would plant ssweet potatoes, Rows about 40 ft long. The plot is on a good grade for drainage. I'm still going to work in some gypsum and additives later before transplanting anything. Before spring try to get a fence up around it.

Yes, I've seen several faulty seed but it didn't hardly get as dry here in my location as some places.

rootman

Hugh, Rootman - I've seen the same thing hear in Ohio (Poor seed development) This has been noted in both wild plants and plants in my seed producing area (which are tranplanted wild plants). I have seen plants that I know produced 8-12 berries last fall have only 1 or 2 berries developing this year and some that have aborted seed production altogether. I've also seen a couple of 3 prong plants going down in the last week or two. Just from what I have observed in the last several years it seems like an early drought like we've had this year is even harder on berry production than what a late summer drought is. I know that 2010 was the dryest late summer drought that I can remember, but even though plants went down early that year they didn't for the most part abort berry production altogether. Most plants that year produced at least a few ripe berries. We'll have some this year too, but I've seen quite a few barren seed spikes.