Potager lazy in the Lot-et-Garonne - clay soil, life to restore-

[Thouvenel]

Hello everyone !

I open a thread to discuss experiences and problems with my modest garden in Lot-et-Garonne where gardening is difficult: soil of old horticultural greenhouses and clay soil.

My expectations, my vision of the garden

As much to say it immediately, I started from very far in my knowledge on plants, soils and gardening techniques.
So, to make my "organic" vegetable garden, I told myself that I was not going to add anything to my soil: no treatments, no fertilizers etc. Just water and the natural fertility of the earth.
Was my soil clay? So much the better because it was deemed to be "fertile", so I was going to have a large "stock" of fertility from which my plants would draw.
The expected results ? I thought they would be average because not having recourse to chemistry which necessarily gives more "beautiful" results.
Not bad, I thought, my vegetables will be healthy ...
So as not to "deplete" my fertility stock too much, I plan to only cultivate in the spring and let the soil "rest". It could then be recharged by mysterious mechanisms which escaped me a little (and which I did not care a little since I did not have to intervene).

Today I measure the extent of my ignorance! However, I feel that it was based on widespread misconceptions and that it has gradually been called into question, which has enriched me a great deal intellectually.


My goals today are to restore life, fertility and a structure favorable to my soil, in order to obtain beautiful and healthy harvests by using my local resources and largely free.
Just as it is rewarding to go from "seed to seed", that is to say, from sowing to harvesting seeds, I also try to make my soil and some compost.

[Thouvenel]

My garden at the origin: from where I left

... about as far as my agronomic knowledge, that is, zero!
The place chosen for my garden was a lawn for a few years. Previously, it was a place occupied by horticultural greenhouses. A small part in a corner of my garden is also provided with many limestone pebbles (can be an old alley).

1

On our arrival in winter 2011, dreary plain ...

I must confess that the idea that residues of pesticides, fungicides or anything else is a little sad, I have not done a test thinking that since the end of this market gardening activity (2005?), The weather has made his work ... what do you think?

On this lawn: "turf", alfalfa and clover white, Veronica Persia, quackgrass, bindweed, plantain, rumex ...
North side a pond of twenty m², deep one meter fifty (dry summer).

2

First attempts at cultivation: considering the compactness of the soil and starting a vegetable garden, it seemed obvious to make squares filled with potting soil. (They are still in place today but the edges rot, they still harbor some aromatics but soon will welcome only flowers to cut (for madam)


Climate: oceanic gradient. Summers are hot and dry, winters more or less mild, without snow, with occasional frosts, rarely below -5 ° C. The last small white frosts can occur until mid-May (3 has happened since 2008), the first usually arrive from mid to late October.
Around, few trees. Some houses with garden and hedges. All surrounded by fields (meadows, conventional agriculture (wheat / sunflower / corn), the nearest field (North) is 40m.

Floor : deep and homogeneous clays. Beige color, concrete if it dries. Cracks of retraction the summer. (It is observed in the photo above). Poor raspberry trees planted in there! (rest assured they are much better since).

[olivier75]

Welcome!
Each lazy garden has a new personal and environmental context.
There will be something to see for Didier's tour!
Olivier.

[denis17]

Welcome to the country of different vegetable gardens
Denis

[Did67]

There will be something to see for Didier's tour!
Olivier.

Oh, there is who it says! Good news ... For now, I let the book make its way, to submit one or the other project to my publishing house ...

[Did67]

My goals today are to restore life, fertility and a structure favorable to my soil, in order to obtain beautiful and healthy harvests by using my local resources and largely free.
Just as it is rewarding to go from "seed to seed", that is to say, from sowing to harvesting seeds, I also try to make my soil and some compost.

1 ° Soil is clay: so potentially fertile. Exactly, it has the "glues" (colloids) to store and a lot of water and a lot of mineral elements (provided that they succeed!

2 ° Sorry, but suddenly, when the fridge is huge, you have to "fill" - so bring even more than elsewhere, so that the plants see the color; if not, it is the glue which adsorbs most of it at first!

3 ° It will also be much more difficult to "aggravate" (it is not only men who have trouble working it! Organisms too)

4 ° It will be necessary to feed them 3 times more !!! And so composting is particularly out of order!

5 ° To treat the fibrous contributions (cellulose - old hay, even straw + clumps or BRF) to produce a max of humic substances, which, in the long run (to count in tens - in the plural - of years!) Will correct the defects this excess clay (compactness, tendency to form compact soils).

If you do not cultivate everything right away, where you plan extensions in two or three years: do the opposite of what I usually say = overloading materials poor (crushed wood, straw), install legumes (clover, alfalfa, field beans). In this soil then suffering seriously from "nitrogen hunger", they will fix a maximum of N in the air. And it is these materials that will produce a maximum of humic substances. 2 or 3 years later, when you are going to plant crops, the soil will already be transformed. But if you start like this, you will have puny vegetables, which cry famine!

6 ° More than any other soil, it will be sensitive to "bad treatment" (trampling: walking on planks; only intervene when it is wiped out - excess water has run off)

7 ° In your climate zone, it will probably be difficult to completely do without irrigation (so collect rainwater?).

[Thouvenel]

Thank you for your messages and kind support.
I will try here to share my experiences and observations, following the evolution that I hope positive of my little garden.

Thank you for your remarks Did. Some elements to bounce on:

1 ° Your soil is clay: therefore potentially fertile. Exactly, it has the "glues" (colloids) to store and a lot of water and a lot of mineral elements (provided that they succeed!

Yes, I wrote it but in my head it was a pledge fertility. And the word "potentially" that you made me understand makes all the difference!
This floor, for me, I could use it as in a fridge. From where my errors at the beginning: loosening the ground, planting and watering that seemed to me the only thing necessary ... A nuance, that "worked" on some cultures.

In addition, I wondered about the usefulness of a more detailed knowledge of my soil. Because "clay" is an observation but it remains rather vague. Maybe ask the farmer who cultivates nearby ...
After that, I don't know if I would change my practices enormously depending on the analysis. I am starting to have a fairly precise idea of ​​the "recipes" to apply at home.

2 ° Sorry, but suddenly, when the fridge is huge, you have to "fill" - so bring even more than elsewhere, so that the plants see the color; if not, it is the glue which adsorbs most of it at first!

3 ° It will also be much more difficult to "aggravate" (it is not only men who have trouble working it! Organisms too)

This is where I had doubts. I had posted several messages on the PP thread a few months ago on this ("no visible aggradation" etc.): first because I was afraid of "indigestion". Indeed, I imagined my soil as a hard and compact base with little life and piling on top of organic matter, it was like putting up "a lasagna" and in the end I had the impression that I was going to cultivate "Aboveground". Moreover, under the hay, the ground seemed to me unchanged, compact.
I will show in more detail with photos that actually observing, it moves, lives, changes, but gently.

4 ° It will be necessary to feed them 3 times more !!! And so composting is particularly out of order!

Reassure yourself, my compost, serves me only for my sowing in a box, the volume has become quite low and my organic matter goes to my soil (there too it is a big change compared to before he received .. .nothing !)
Oh yes, I made expensive contributions of white peat. I still have a bag and I do not really know what to do now because it is a poor material and spread it on the surface seems a little useless ... What do you think?

My current compost is made to 80% ... - sensitive souls to abstain ...... quack grass!
I could not see myself swaying in composting surface on my garden (!)
Well I can say that it makes a compost quite correct!

5 ° To treat the fibrous contributions (cellulose-old hay, even straw + clumps or BRF) to produce a max of humic substances, which, in the long run (to count in tens - in the plural - of years!) Will correct the defects this excess clay (compactness, tendency to form compact soils).

.Paille it is niet because treated often, nevertheless, I can glean it in phenomenal quantity because there are hectares of wheat crops around my home according to years and rotations. It's a little frustrating. Is it justified to deprive me of it?

.Tonte, it remains limited by the surface of my land where the grass grows little between June and September.

.BRF also limited: my young hedge grows quietly and my only resource are willows and poplar regrowths, around my pond, which can be seen in the photos posted above.

.Foin: I have a good supplier and it is almost free, I took two rolls this year, I even mulched my fruit.

On my resources, I also have straw horse manure, a bit of a hassle to transport but I will bring in more in the future. The same goes for the leaves (oak) which I can easily obtain. compost made from green waste A farmer not too far away offers it at 10 € per cubic meter (not certified AB), is that correct?

So much for my resources. On the contributions, I will detail my plan of kitchen garden with my various contributions according to my boards and my rotation.

Basically I try to vary the intakes by tuning them with the crops growing in it. And above all, I make a rotation that will allow after four years to all my boards to have received all of these varied contributions.

6 ° More than any other soil, it will be sensitive to "bad treatment" (trampling: walking on planks; only intervene when it is wiped out - excess water has run off)

Yes, since this autumn! Paths 55cm (width of my lawnmower), planks 2,40m with a passage in the middle with wooden planks. Here too, an error more corrected!

7 ° In your climate zone, it will probably be difficult to completely do without irrigation (so collect rainwater?).

The rainwater goes into the pond. My vegetable garden being only 100m², my needs are low.
Last year, an experiment: wait for the signs of wilting of my tomatoes. Result: a single watering (at the plantation) throughout the season!

[anarchorete]

Here, it is (to three cows near) the same context as mine. Same soil, same climate, same weeds ... We'll be able to get some tips!

[Did67]

You don't know what makes me happy, when I see how quickly you understand. And suddenly, from my point of view, it's perfect (in the approach). The results should not be long! [With always possible "failures", living beings not letting themselves be directed as easily as that and having their own logics that we do not always understand]

[Did67]

A nuance, that "worked" on some cultures. !

The image of the fridge is not good!

We must rather imagine a "cistern" and the slopes which "siphon" from the top. The lower the level, the more difficult they have to siphon ...

So clay = huge tank. Sand = small bottle. A few liters: in the clay soil, it is not enough for the plants to siphon. In the sand, it overflows (will be leached).

[Here, I must keep it if I write my agronomy treaty]

Added to this is that some plants are much greedy than others.

And there is also the fact that for historical reasons (contributions) or "geological" (bedrock), your soil can be rich in one element and poor in another. And such and such a species may be sensitive to this element (eg potash), such other not.

The results of analysis of your neighbor farmers would be very useful! Especially if he had data on an area he had not fertilized too much (a natural meadow - a new plot?). You could imagine that at home, it's not so different then ...

While knowing that we would not follow at all the "recommendations" made by a "conventional" laboratory, which reasons within a framework "cultures under infusions"