Wow, was this a output in terms of cost, and I will need to buy a few more steel garbage cans to make sure I can have proper storage for some of these, last thing I want is to lose even a few ounces of any of these.. Each one was choosen with care for what they could offer to the farm. As they said in the seminar, most of the food you buy at the store is lacking in trace minerals and vitamins, and what is not in your soil, will be lacking in your grown fruit and veggies, as well as lacking in your hay and therefor in your critters.
50pds of Bentonite Clay- Detoxifier, Antitoxin as well as Antibacterial
44pds of activated charcoal-Toxin binder
50pds of Diatomaceous Earth-Feed Supplement/Parasiticide
5 gallons of 35% Hydrogen peroxide-Disinfectant/feed supplement
55pds of Kelp Meal-Reduces Mastitis and abortion rates, improves milking production and overall improves immune response.
15 gallon barrel of white vinegar at 20%- Disinfectant and Defoliant
and I put in a order for
- 50pds of Greensand
- 50pds of Gypsum
- 3 gallons of Molasses for the garden/compost
As odd as it may sound, I think I am most excited in regards to the vinager and trying the molasses in the garden and compost process to see if it really does help or if I got took 🙂 at the trade show..
What are you hoping to buy in bulk this year and use in the garden that is new and in trail form, or do you have something you get every single year that you would not want to be without?
A little garden Case Study for you.. What questions and advice would you give?
Early retired baby boomers in their early sixties bought a farm five years ago, they are trying to garden just under half an acre, poor heavy clay soil is their main concern. They have about a dozen chickens with a hawk issue, no other livestock other then the farm dog, they do a organic (not certified) hay crop each year that they sell to the small horse farm next door that breeds arbians. They are mainly organic about 50 to 60 percent at the store and about 40% or so in regards to meat..
The question I got asked was “how do i improve my soil and my garden results, I tried organic gardening and its just not working, the bugs, the plants are not growing well in our soil and the yeild results are very poor”
So, what would be your questions and advice.. -note, I will only be able to give answers to the questions if they are the same ones, either I or the others at the table asked them?
Just another Day on the Farm 
Heavy clay soil is hard to deal with, I have the same problem. I have access to a lot of grass hay contaminated by feeding cows dragging it out of feeders, as well as a lot of cow, horse and donkey dung. In the fall I’m putting down a layer some 6 to 12 inches deep on top of my garden plot and allowing it to decompose all winter. If I keep this mulch damp all winter by spring I can till in what small amount remains and it seems to be helping, this is my 2nd winter into this long term soil building process.
Happy gardening
I would send this couple to anything John Jeavons related. His history of taking over-used land and making it into a veritable Eden sounds like exactly what this pair of Baby Boomers needs. http://www.growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html
We have lots of predators, including hawks. To have chickens (and have them live!) we have a coop we keep with a deep litter method (and tons of room for the hens) for the winter. In milder weather, they go outside to a 12×12 dog kennel. It has chicken wire and shade cloth on top, a plastic dog kennel for laying and shelter from storms, and chicken wire up 3 feet from the ground for additional predator protection. We move this around by levering up the sides, sliding round fence posts under the edges, and pulling the cage forward every 2-3 days in a large pasture. This way, we fertilize the ground, get bug control, and don’t have to fret about predators. We do have to carry out feed and water, though, and collect eggs multiple times on really hot days.
As for the clay situation, we ended up using raised beds and cheated by filling them with a mix of the clay and organic potting soil. It’s expensive, but let’s me garden intensively. I interplant crops to keep down bugs. Some bugs that are voracious are avoided by planting crops they love (squash, cucumbers, pumpkin, etc) every other year. I also rotate the type of plant in each bed every year, making sure a good nitrogen fixer followers a heavy feeder (beans or peas follow tomatoes, for example). I have had good results this way. For extra pesky bugs, I use insecticidal soap.
Lastly, I follow the advice farmers used to use: plant four times as much as I need: one for the birds, one for the bugs, one for disease (or weather), and one for me. If all four ripen and are ready to eat, the local food bank is more than happy to handle the excess.
Several decades ago we had a farm with heavy clay soil and alkali. We had a miserable time with everything except alfalfa. We started with a small section of the garden and added about 10 times the mulch and manure normally required in a garden. It would be great if the horse ranch next door to the early retirees would share large amounts of manure since they are eating organic hay. We would go to town and gather leaves from the streets after people cleaned their yards in the fall and even rake lawns just to take the leaves. We would til, add more, til, add more. We added about 1,000 worms instead of fishing with them. Once one small area was healthy, we began on the next. Here’s the mistakes we made;
1) Using donations of grass clippings. You don’t know what people use on their lawns, usually some type of weed control. Not only do you not want to eat this but they are broad leaf specific and therefore target exactly what you are trying to grow. Only time will fix this as the chemicals have to leach out. Also with grass, you can end up planting seeds in your garden and some varieties have extensive root systems so you simply can’t get rid of it without chemicals.
2) Using manure from a feed lot. Feed lots have salt licks for the cattle to keep them hydrated for transport and to inflate the weight before sale to the slaughter house. We already had a problem with alkali, the last thing we needed was to add salt.
3) Once you’ve tilled and tilled, don’t get greedy and try deepening your garden by plowing. We turned 8 inches of beautiful soil 2 feet under trying to make it deep enough to grow potatoes. All this accomplished was setting us back to square one. We learned to add straw to the potato bed as the plants grow, allowing the plants to have a fluffy medium to grow in. The potatoes did great and we had all that straw to til in.
I’m anxious to go through your list to see if any of your ingredients can help our garden. I suggest you research the Bentonite a little more before you put it in your garden, just to be sure it’s affect is what you want. That’s what we put in our pond to ‘seal’ it. Bentonite expands and prevents leaching or drainage. I’m no expert, just saying do a little extra homework on that one.
Hi Pam
Not going answer about the garden/clay soil on my own advice until tomorrow to give folks a chance to write their thoughts but wanted to address the Bentonite
Its not for the garden, as it say’s in the title for farm/critter use, the Bentonite is for a couple things..
a) its a natural detoxifier, and a natural way to treat light scours in all the farm critters which is somethign that tends to be issue when they start fresh spring grass, I am hoping to steal a wad out of Girl’s mouth of her cud to put in Marty to help get his gut ready for the spring, but I also want to be able to treat his loose stool in a organic way this spring.
b) Allowing my sheep ewes access to this, also increase’s their butterfat content in their milk which is awesome, as it increased my cheese making yeilds..
c) made into a paste, it can be using in fly season to seal and help heal naturally occuring wounds, like those barb wire pokes that are sure to happen, and I perfer to treat early and fast, so that I don’t every need to get to the point of antibodics.
d) we have a few plants that are still considered on the toxic list for certian grazing animals on the farm and giving them free access to limited amount of this, allows them to self treat as needed.
As a added bonus, you can indeed also use it as a sealant but as you can see from the above, that is not my goals with it, but its nice to have that choice if required.
We have heavy clay soil – about a foot down you could make pottery out of it. Add lots and lots of organic matter and keep at it, it’s a never ending process. Working it (or even walking on it) when too wet will destroy the tilth, so they have to watch and learn that magic moment when it is ok to till. If it’s coming up in clods it’s too wet and there is on sense in fighting it, it will just make it worse. Plowing in the fall helps a lot, the freeze/thaw action all winter breaks the clay up. Having designated walkways in the garden keeps the foot traffic down around plant roots and keeps the compaction to a minimum, I plant any root veg in rows just wide enough for me to reach the middle on each side. Planting in single rows means they end up being walked through and the soil gets compacted, and once wet compacted clay dries it might as well be cement. Heavy mulches in a wet year can be detrimental as the soil stays too wet and leads to fungus and disease problems, sometimes it’s better to leave the ground bare and amend in the fall. As the soil improves they should see a drop in the pest loss – stressed plants are wimpy and can’t make up for what the bugs take. Breaking up plantings by family helps with the bugs too, don’t plant large swaths of things related and share the same pests. Don’t leave plant residue to overwinter, remove anything that could shelter disease/bugs and at least break the soil up for the same reason. And if they are using manure from that horse farm, they should make sure it’s composted nice and hot. Horse manure is full of weed seeds (ask me how I learned that one 🙂 ) Also, since it takes a while to improve abused clay, they could side dress plants with compost in the meantime.
Are they swopping hay for manure? Or even acting as a free manure drop for the horse farm? All that organic material would help their soils. If your soil isn’t what you want it to be, it can become better, but it takes time. Whilst they continue to work to improve the land, they could grow on top of it in hugelbeets or raised beds. I would have said to compost everything, their soil is going to need it. If the hawks are taking their chickens then I have only ever read that they would have to cage the chickens. I know you have written about roosters guarding thier ladies, but they would still be loosing. More live chickens would mean more lovely chicken poop to improve thier soil..If they used a chicken tractor arrangement then the chickens could still forage every day whilst improving the soil at the same time. Our home was on clay in the UK but over the 20 yrs we lived there it became really good. My dad would dig some bits in fall and leave it in big lumps to let the frost at it in the worst areas.
They seem to have framed gardening as something you try for a bit and if it doesnt work, you do something else. I would encourage them to see their endeavours as their long term contribution to a short period in the life of their land. Not only will it be a process of continuouslly improving it so it can provide for them, but also so that it can continue to be healthy and productive in the future. I would also say, that in the beginning, you might make some choices differently to in the future. As an example, right now I feel I am fighting to improve my yard from a very poor start point. Sometimes the slug invasions getting me down so much, on top of everything else we are working to overcome, I kill them with slug pellets. I hope in the future, I wont have to, but for now, just sometimes I will do things to make life easier and try not to beat myself up too badly about it.
Can you explain about the molasses in the compost.
Hi Kristine
I will indeed be explain how its used and what its to do, but I had planned a post on it to be able to go into the detail of how to use it and why its being recommmend, I will make it one of the first garden posts starting in March, so you won’t have to wait long.
Perhaps others then myself will try it and we can compare notes on how it works in their zone and garden, this is a new one for me, but a few folks at the booth had done it over the past couple years and swore that it worked for them.
Thank you. I’ll look forward to learning from you!
Compost, compost, compost.
When we put in our first garden, it was all clay and the tiller just bounced instead of digging in. But we persisted, and by the time we’d tilled in a good six inches of compost from the mushroom farm (mainly horse manure and Peat), bags and bags of leaves (scavenged from in town the previous fall) and the wood ash we’d been saving from the stove, that soil was so full of organics that it felt like you we’re walking on a bed of moss in the woods. (Wound up with too much nitrogen that first summer, but after that – awesome!!
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