I have been
battling bad soil in my garden for 14 years now and I think I finally found a
cure.
The typical
garden soil here in Alberta consists mostly of what the builder left behind
after stripping the topsoil and throwing down some grass seed. In my case, it
is mostly clay; after pulling up the grass for the vegetable garden, my soil
looked like a cracked concrete parking lot for the first year.
My neighbours buy
dozens of bags of compost every year to mix into the soil and I have tried
doing this, but the size of my back yard and vegetable garden make this a very
time consuming and expensive solution. I make my own compost, but it is not big
enough to provide all the compost I need.
I have planted
potatoes which do help with breaking up the soil, but they don't add anything
to the soil.
Planting fall rye in the fall |
You can plow fall rye under in April, when it is about 10 centimeters tall. Its roots will be twice as deep as it is tall, so there is an impressive amount of biomass to plow under.
Rototilling fall rye in the spring |
I used a rototiller to plow the fall rye under, it didn't take much of an effort to do that. It resulted in the best soil quality yet, with minimal effort and cost.