Hi!
How much of this area are you going to plant? It looks like a field with woods in back? There are two things I would do if I were you, put a layer of organic matter down after the hogs are done, and start small so you dont get too overwhelmed. When I say organic matter I mean coffee grounds and veggie scraps, because you already have the manure. Start saving! I would just put that down to make the soil more workable, and let the earthworms work it in for you over the winter. Next spring you will have much improved soil! Second is start small, I know you're very enthusiastic, and that's great! However, you can easily get overwhelmed, especially the first year. I made that mistake myself!
Have you ever heard of lasagna gardening? I turned a portion of my field this spring into a lasagna garden and it worked wonders for our clay soil! You can do a search on gardenweb for articles if you are interested.
Hope that helps!
Holly

I plan to use about a 50x50 area. A large portion of it will be corn. Looking @ the picture again it does appear to be woods in the back however I chose this section because it gets FULL sun (not kidding) for 10-12 hours of the day and the woods are a lot further than they appear to be. I am so excited about this project but I dont want to get overwhelmed so I'm keeping myself calm. :) thanks for the info.

best suggestion i can offer is check out our presentations of raised garden beds all too easy in the end, you may get some ideas from there?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

We have a 1.5 acre veggie garden for just the 2 of us, and we don't have the luxury of being able to afford a tractor; a 24" tiller and our home push lawn mower are about all the machanery we can afford for awhile. We also don't have any water, electricity, buildings etc since what we purchased was just farmland.

It is A LOT of work. The first year we activly gardened about 1/2 of the area and the weeds on the other part looked like in your picture. We then mowed them down with our little push mower at the end of the season when they were dry and crunchy.

It is now the 3rd year and we use the entire space, putting in a large area of sweet corn, and lots of pumpkins, gourds, squash etc. We also have added perennials; strawberries, raspberries, asparagus, horseradish & rhubarb. It is hard to keep the weeds down, the tiller and mower still get used regularly in addition to the hand weeding.

If you have access to mulch use it, any way you can save time from weeding you will be grateful. You will be amazed how many weed seeds are still in that area.

The hogs are a great idea, if I had access to water I would have some animals out there too. You may still want to lay some newspaper down or use round-up to help take care of the weeds before you start planting.

Start small, you can always add perennial plants later. And decide how much time you have/want to devote to it. We work full time and go out to our garden (a 40 minute drive from home) after work 4 out of 5 days and stay until its too dark to see. Then we are out there all day (usually 9 hrs) on either sat or sun; the other weekend day is spend at home taking care of the lawn/flowers etc there. There are times it feels like we have no life in the summer, so if summer fun is important to you keep it small enough to handle.

I'm just starting a new garden myself, in more space than I've ever had before (about 40'x40'). Don't have any hogs to work for me though! I live in town and this is in my backyard.

I'm trying to heed other gardeners' advice and start small. I'm doing a square foot/biointensive type thing where I'm arranging my garden in 4'x8' planting beds with 3' paths between. I'm trying to do one bed at a time, turning the soil a bit and then adding a layer of cardboard (we have a lot since we just moved) and a 1-2" layer of bought compost or manure (since I don't have any of my own compost yet) on top to start smothering the grass and improving the soil, with shredded cedar mulch in the paths between.

And then I jumped the gun and have already planted corn in one bed and gourds along the fence. :-/

It is much less overwhealming if you work on a little bit at a time. So right now I've got my one bed with corn, another bed that hasn't been planted yet but that I just put the compost on, and the row of gourds along the fence. That's less than a quarter of my total available area, but I can concentrate on tending those guys and adding more beds when I have the time and/or resources to do it.

Also, this way I can (hopefully) avoid the garden getting bigger than I can handle. I probably won't even use my whole space. The biggest garden I had before was 10' by 20' and that got out of hand, though it was also a community garden plot that I had to make a car or bus trip to in order to work on, instead of just walking out the back door.

This time hopefully I will be able to tell when my garden is "big enough" and can stop adding to it then. Hopefully.

As mentioned in another post, I took and area about 50 by 200 as a test spot. I sprayed everything killer and let set for a week. Then I worked the soil and planted. Everything is doing great in that area, without the weeds. Next year when Southern States has there rig at the farm, I am going to slip the operator a couple bucks to spray an area 100 by 200 for me. No weeds is a great.

the bigger the garden the more work involved...corn does require quite a bit of room and is not too hard to keep up with,,,best if you have a tiller that you can get down between the rows many times untill it gets a couple feet high. plan to plant a few varieties so you can choose your favorite and ofcourse several succession plantings,,,squash and other vines are not too labour intensive as well, remember not only do you have to prep the garden you have to maintain it and water it and also harvest the veggies, many of which have a best before time, if they go too long they may only be good for the hogs, we won't mention preserving the harvest!,,,,nothing beats fresh veggies from your own garden for sure.
"I sprayed everything killer and let set for a week." hmmm something to ponder....if it kills everything, do you really want to eat stuff grown in it,,,and is that going to build a great soil structure for the future,,,,i am no friend of weeds but there are a LOT of other ways to deal with them... broc on

If you haven't posted on the Georgia Forum, give it a try. There are people who post there with lots of knowledge about conditions specific to Georgia. A nice man who goes by user name SHOT knows a whole lot about growing corn, and vegetable gardening in general.

Another good source of information, including amending clay soils is "Gardening in the South with Don Hastings" by Don Hastings (of course). It is just a small book but filled with terrific information on successful vegetable gardening in Georgia particularly. This book is available through most public libraries.

I included a link to the publications web pages for the University of Georgia. You can find lots of good info./advice there on just about anything to do with farming/vegetable gardening in Georgia.

We live around 20 miles from Stockbridge. There is still plenty of time to grow some vegetables this year if you want to get started.

Here is a link that might be useful: Univ. of Georgia College of Agricultural Sciences

I mostly agree with Josie. People don't realize how easy it is to lose control of the weeds (actually you know, given the picture you show). It is important to start so that you have time to develop your garden without the pressure of continuous weeding and watering. So:

1) Cover with wood chips every square foot where you will not direct seed for a few years. In this part of the garden you will plant garlic, onions, potatoes, beans, and anything that is set out as a plant (virtually every summer veggie). One foot is not too much. You may have to adjust the pH with lime, but underneath the hog treated soil should have enough nitrogen for a year. Eventually, you will have to add some N (I prefer to add urea, 46/0/0, after a heavy mulching event). No need to add P and K which are in the chips. Important: wood chips are free. Call a tree company and ask them to dump a load on your property.

1.5) use other mulches where you would like to have soil next year. Leaves will typically give you soil in a year.

2) all that growth has sent roots down two or three feet. That is very very good, given that you have clay. It will be reasonably well drained, and you can not incorporate organic matter that deep with a tiller. There is probably no need to till.

3) Use Roundup, some scratching and some compost in the part of the garden where you will direct seed (carrot, lettuce, radish, etc.). There, you will have to weed and water more due to the lack of mulch. In time, old mulch will form a layer of reasonably weed free soil and you will be able to direct seed everywhere.

4) For the first year, plant only veggies that do really well in Georgia, or rather are really easy to grow. There was a thread here a few months back about the five easiest things to grow at your site, see what Southerners said there.

5) fence, fence, fence. underneath, above, electrical, chemical, treaty-controlled weaponry, whatever. Use the Powell doctrine of fencing, by which you fence with overwhelming force and never encourage them. At my site, growing corn without a fence is simply not possible.

6) long term paths. Say no to mulch in the paths, use gravel over weed block, old carpet upside down, or even pavers. It is not helpful to have weeds right next to the weed-free vegetable beds. Going down the path with a weedeater is even worse, as it will also eat a number of veggies.

7) perennials are good. Lots of produce, not much work. Here it would be asparagus, raspberry, aronia, herbs, but there you may consider figs, persimmon, asparagus, and herbs.

I postponed my perennials and wished I hadn't. If you like them plant fruit trees and berries now as it takes a few years to get production going. Lots of much and corn and melons should keep the initial work down.

I can attest to the complete effectiveness of the lasagne gardening. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I may not have believed it could work so well with this clay soil. I started with a plot about 20 x 20 initially. I collected dozens upon dozens of bags of grass clippings, also later in the year I got bags and bags of leaves which had some pine cones and pine needles mixed in, I also got a few truck loads of well composted horse pooh (it was a good mix of pooh and straw and/or sawdust, I loaded my suv numerous times with cardboard boxes from the dollar store, collected newspaper from a local hotel, and every scrap from my kitchen, also loads of coffee grounds from starbucks...and finally about 30 bales of moldy hay.

I think I put down about a foot when it was all said and done.

This ground was the very red clay when I started and when dry you could NOT put a shovel into it. I piled all this stuff on in layers as best as I could and topped it off with the hay (for what's it is worth, I would NOT use the hay again, I think it caused more problems later on..

Anyway, I left it over the winter and then in the spring, when I went out to plant tomatoes into it all that was left was a thin layer of the hay which was easily moved aside or dug into..It was like butter, I never tilled this area. not before putting down the OM, nor after. It was truly amazing.

I continue to add OM to it, this year I did actually till it deeply, because I had a problem with bermuda (another rookie manuever) but so far, with another thick layer of newspaper and heavy mulch...so far the weeds are at bay and everything is growing fine.

I just put out more squash, okra, cantelope and peppers this week, so It is probably not too late for you to try stuff.

Raised beds would be a good way to go, until your OM gets in good.

Well, I'm not familiar with hog-tilling, but I would definitely add a lot of organic matter onto the soil now. 3", 6", whatever you can manage. Shredded bark mulch, leaves, straw, whatever. And all that overgrowth looks like primo material! Add nitrogen to help break it down. If the hogs stomp it into the clay, great. If not, hire some guy with a bobcat tiller. I did that once and for $60, he churned up the soil for an hour, 12" deep!

By next Spring, you should have some decent soil.