soil

I live Waynesville North Carolina and I been having trouble finding some free topsoil for my garden I tryed pasting a add in the I wanna paper but got no calls I was thinking maybe a constructon company would have some dirt they want rid off and needed a palce to dump it and would bring it to my house or someone would have some they wanted to give away and would deliver it to me free or I could pick it up free I need maybe a couple of pickup loads or a dump truck or 2 also could I use cowmanuar and plant directly in the cowmanuare I called a few places and they want over $25.00 a YARD and I need a lot maybe 11 yards because my garden is 20 wide across and 20 long and I need it to be 3 to 6 inches deep because my soil is hard and rocky in my garden and has no good qualitys my vegetables do awful every year I get very few tomatoes and very few cucumbers and lettuace and very few quash and corn and beans and they get no size I do water it the person who lives beside me use the bag dirt from the store and build his up about 6 inches deep and put in cowmanuare and conpost when he made his and puts in shed leaves every year his grows like a jungle his vegetable grow very good is there a cheeper way than useing the little bags of soil. maybe a free way I have no palce for a stinky compost heap or the time to work it

someone in the newspaper used black plastic and his garden made a lot of vegetables. how does this work and how do I get rid of trouble some wiregrass or bermuade grass it I add new topsoil will the stuff still grow or will it stop it I plan to make it 3 to 6 inches thick

A fairly cheap and easy way to grow stuff and build up good soil at the same time looks to be bale gardening. There is an entire forum devoted to it: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/strawbale/all/

Basically, you put down bales of straw or alfalfa where you want to have your garden, water it a LOT, add some nitrogen fixer to it (blood meal if you are going organic, or something stronger if not), water it in and keep watering daily until you can put your hand in and have it come out of the bale slimy, but cool. Once the bale is nice and slimy, but not hot, you can plant stuff in it and enjoy.

I have some cucumbers in the back right now, trying this technique and they are thriving like you would not believe. I used blood meal for my nitrogen fix, and instead of just putting plants in the bales, dug little holes that I filled with a bit of potting soil (to make for a stronger root area as they grew). I transplanted them when they were tiny (only 3 leaves and about 2" tall, in peat pots) about 2 weeks ago. They are now about 18" tall, starting to grow the little curly things to grab a trellis, and seem to LOVE the bales.

This might be a good way to build your garden soil up. After all, you can harvest and let the bales just continue to rot, which will build up the garden.

I wouldn't bother trying to find yourself free topsoil--anything you get for free is not likely going to be high quality topsoil, it's more likely to be fill dirt that's poor quality, probably not much better than what you have now. That's the sort of dirt people are usually looking to get rid of, the good quality stuff you're going to have to pay for. Hastur's suggestion is good, or there's also lasagna gardening, where you put down layers of newspaper, grass clippings, etc on top of your soil--I don't know all the details since I've never tried it but if you search the forums here for lasagna gardening or google it you'll find lots of info.

grassman1,

The wiregrass/Bermuda grass will grow through anything. If you put soil, newspapers, cardboard, landscaping fabric over it, it will grow through, over, and around any of that. Where I come that stuff is called devil grass. Some of the grass killers for Bermuda grass might work. I put about four layers of cardboard over the grass. This did not kill the grass but did help a lot to control it. I still have to pull out devil grass shoots coming up in my beds.

You can do lasagna beds. Basically this is "composting in place" rather than having a compost pile, waiting for it to become compost, and then putting it into your beds. There are books on the lasagna bed method. You can check your local library for a copy. There is a formula for what to put in the bed and how much, but I was always short of "greens" so I bought a large bag of alfalfa pellets for $15.00. I made three beds last year just piling up leaves, prunings from the plants, old veggie plants, periodically adding alfalfa pellets, and such. By spring it was all decomposed down. I planted veggies in them this year and everything grew very well.

This is the time of the year to start lasagna beds. People will be raking up leaves and putting them in bags at the street -- watch for them and get as much as you can as you'll want to pile it up about 18-24 inches high. Every four or five inches or so, you can add an inch or two of purchased dirt and some alfalfa pellets if you want to. I was worried that the leaves would blow around, but that was not a problem. You'll have six months for it to decompose. In the spring you'll have new, practically free "dirt" to plant in.

I found that some of the "purchased" soil was not terrific either, especially from the "by the yard" folks -- mostly sand. Lowe's here does carry a brand of bagged soil that is fairly decent for about $1.25/bag which turned out to be half the price of dirt by the yard. I can't remember the brand name off hand, but the bag has blue and green writing/pictures on it. There is another brand of bagged dirt that is really awful -- total sand. But even with the decent brand of bagged dirt, you would still need to add the composting material.

ecrane3,

You too suggested lasagna beds while I was typing this. I've tried it and it's a cheap, easy way to deal with bad soil.

Karen

A note about the lasagne bed and "borrowing" frorm your neighborhood: If you are doing the Organic thing, you may want to be careful about the clippings and leaves you borrow. Some neighbors will over fertilize and overuse pesticides and herbicides.

Also, if you need more 'green' you can make a deal with the guys that mow your lawn, or your neighbors lawn, to get bags of green stuff from their grass. I found this out by accident when I asked the guys that did my lawn what they did with the clippings they raked up from people that were not loonies like me and just left the grass down to create fertilizer.

Hastur,

Good suggestions. In this area I don't think anyone much uses fertilizer or pesticides/herbicides -- they let it go and if it grows, fine - if not, oh well. We mow our own lawn, but I've given thought to contacting lawn companies for additional clippings -- so far, it's still on my "to do" list. The alfalfa was a huge 50-pound bag, though, for just $15.00. I only used half of it last year for three beds about 4'x12'.

Karen

thankyou all

Help! I am a school principal and have a raised bed garden at the school. We think there are nimotoads in the soil. I do I get rid of them?
-wrm

To Glendale Kid, where do you purchase "alfalfa pellets"? That is a new one on me! It would be nice to have green stuff ready when needed. Having the different components available at the same time to mix compost properly is often difficult.

thankyou

Beamer1: There are beneficial nematodes that eat the grubs that can attack and destroy your garden. You may want to investigate the type of nematodes that you have before just automatically killing them off. Just a thought.

Alfalfa pellets can be purchased at a feed store.

Thank you, grannymarsh! I am learning much from this website due to the helpful sharing of lots of great gardening friends.