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I built my home about 25 years ago with my own two hands on land my grandfather used to pasture his work horses. Like my grandfather, I have a passion for gardening, although I use Big Red (TroyBuilt tiller) instead of horses.

My soil here is (or was) pretty poor. A lifeless looking heavy redish and clay mix without much organic matter content. It actually looks and feels like subsoil - perhaps the topsoil was stripped by the glaciers. I have worked very hard to organically enrich the soil with green manures, compost, mulch and some manure. I have always stayed away from pesticides, but have used commercial fertilizer.

This coming season, I will give total organic gardening a go. I planted winter wheat to cut and till in, in the spring and I am stock piling leaves to make compost in the spring. I'm having a load of fresh horse manure delivered and will build a big pile to breakdown over winter.
12-31-2005 note: The switch to totally organic went really well. Everything produced pretty well. Quite unlike the eternal spring of last season, this summer was very hot and dry. The tomatoes did fantastic and I had to make new friends to give away the excess. Top dressed with a good layer of compost, they just way exceeded my expectations. I did have some trouble with cucumber beetles in the squash and the peppers failed again this year and the potato production was way down. I didn't water much as I feared taxing the well so I'm sure this was a factor. I shallow tilled all my leaves into the garden in the fall and I'm actively involved in vermicomposting.

I live in: United States

My zone is: z5 CNY

My favorite forum 1 is Soil.

My favorite forum 2 is Organic Gardening.

First registered on April 22,2004.