Handsome pups! That was a tremendous amount of work. I waited a few days after rain when the clay was malleable to till it with a small electric tiller, and worked in compost. We poured water on the clay when I redid the fence posts, too. I’m afraid that the top dressing has mostly blown off in our famous Oklahoma winds so I don’t know how successful my seed planting has been. I know gardening and landscaping is hard work, but it’s also medicine.
Doing stuff in the garden has been therapeutic. It always would be, but it especially was in 2020 and 2021. We would have been envious of your tiller! As you can see, we had a prolonged dry spell. I think you can tell in one of the photos that we did use water to soften the clay, but it didn't help much until we got to borrow a pickaxe.
I hope enough of your top dressing and seeds survived to at least get a decent start. How do farmers cope with the winds there?
Remember the Oklahoma Dust Bowl? Shelterbelts (windbreaks) were planted in the Plains States during the Great Depression to mitigate this. However, we've had high winds in the last few weeks that kicked up the dust that filtered the sun. Some farmers plant cover crops to enrich the soil over winter, but there are lots of acres of unplanted fields and I think we've had enough winter rain to keep much of it from blowing away.
Maybe the winter rain will have kept enough of yours from blowing away too? We can hope... Nobody wants the Dust Bowl to happen again, but with weather becoming more extreme, it could.
Handsome pups! That was a tremendous amount of work. I waited a few days after rain when the clay was malleable to till it with a small electric tiller, and worked in compost. We poured water on the clay when I redid the fence posts, too. I’m afraid that the top dressing has mostly blown off in our famous Oklahoma winds so I don’t know how successful my seed planting has been. I know gardening and landscaping is hard work, but it’s also medicine.
Doing stuff in the garden has been therapeutic. It always would be, but it especially was in 2020 and 2021. We would have been envious of your tiller! As you can see, we had a prolonged dry spell. I think you can tell in one of the photos that we did use water to soften the clay, but it didn't help much until we got to borrow a pickaxe.
I hope enough of your top dressing and seeds survived to at least get a decent start. How do farmers cope with the winds there?
Remember the Oklahoma Dust Bowl? Shelterbelts (windbreaks) were planted in the Plains States during the Great Depression to mitigate this. However, we've had high winds in the last few weeks that kicked up the dust that filtered the sun. Some farmers plant cover crops to enrich the soil over winter, but there are lots of acres of unplanted fields and I think we've had enough winter rain to keep much of it from blowing away.
Maybe the winter rain will have kept enough of yours from blowing away too? We can hope... Nobody wants the Dust Bowl to happen again, but with weather becoming more extreme, it could.