Hi Nancy. I can relate to the two week digging time. Here with clay loam it can be a bit like that. There is a TWO HOUR space for weeding after a rain when the soil gets dry enough to weed easily and before it gets too hard. Now that is for some unamended garden soils. I amended a lot of mine [experimented]......praise?..Hah. Anyway, I looove it.

Most everyone has either clay or sand for soil. Very few are lucky enough to have Loam, a very particular soil type consisting of about 45 percent sand, 25 percent silt, 25 percent clay, and 5 percent organic matter. People with clay soils that are difficult to work, dry too quickly or stay wet too long simply do not have enough organic matter in their soils. I have seen that enough in my 50 years of gardening to knwo that.
Many people will say "I keep adding organic matter to my soil and it disappears." Well, yes because that is what happens to organic matter, the Soil Food Web digestes it to feed the plants growing in that soil. You will need to add organic matter to any soil forever.
if the little you did add did not help you did not add enough and you need to add more. However, sometimes more can also create problems since that organic matter helps hold moisture in soils you can create a bog by adding too muich.

In a related vein, I repeatedly see new-enthusiast gardeners mistakenly believing that gardening (or composting for that matter) requires the equivalent to stoichiometric chemistry -- high precision. They waste a lot of time and energy and often money, and furthermore many lose pleasure by fretting (though some obsessive types love the fretting over minor details).

I will read of persons who scour three counties looking for, say, 5-3-7 fertilizer that they saw recommended, not rarely by a university website from the opposite side of the continent. In doing so they will pass up a score of establishments with the perfectly acceptable substitutes (when high acreage is not involved) of standard 10-10-10, 13-13-13, etc.

When significant additions of OM make no long-term improvements to fertility it doesn't mean that not enough OM was added, it means something else. Most likely that the decay system is not correct, and that is due to mineral imbalances. Dominant weeds tell the story. It is such a complex subject, soil fertility, which is why simplistic thinking and practice does not always get good results. It can, just by chance, but more often not. Depends on how severe the underlying deficits are.

pnbrown, what do you mean that "dominant weeds tell the story?"

I have added leaves [mulched or not] for years on garden soil. Did it make the soil "like an onion bed"? No. I have also added strawy/hayey manure and residues...same answer.

What worked like a dream for me was adding about 30% sand [different sizes], 30% local sphagnum peat moss, and mixing it well into my good clay loam topsoil...making it about 40% "earth". It is a dream. It absorbs water like a sponge. It is not too wet [kimm] with or without the sand. It is loooooong lasting.

Great topic!

There are a few issues here.

First, the Soil forum has some extremely knowledgeable participants and contributors. It is possible to get some very specific information... too much so in some cases... but the potential for understanding a soil test recommendation, Brix testing, cation exchange, and mycorrhizae function is of great value to some, if over the heads of others (I include myself in the latter at times... I sucked at organic chemistry... it is an enormously valuable resource for those with some technical background, but it can be daunting, and off-putting, for those who are new to the craft and want workable knowledge without the benefit of experience - they are here to learn, and haven't even the background to know what questions to ask yet, or the information needed to receive a valid response. The question needs to be answered in an accessible way for the questioner, and that isn't always easy to assess.

There are also people who have practical or theoretical knowledge, as opposed to technical (scientific) knowledge. This is no less useful - for new gardeners it is sometimes MORE useful, because they are often more interested in "how" and "when" than the "why" that more advanced growers are seeking. These are still specific questions and answers, but the result is often a particular action, rather than a deeper understanding, and that is what many new gardeners are looking for.

A second issue that arises is applicability. The questioner may have a set of parameters that are unmentioned in the original post - they may be handicapped, or in zone 9, or 3, or be strictly organic - so sometimes the responses are at the same time valid, but inappropriate. It's nobody's fault; the poster may not know that a particular circumstance is limiting, someone writing a reply may not have the data at hand to take into account. The result (which I think is good) is that there are a variety of responses that may suggest a range of possible answers. For an experienced gardener, this creates a more valuable resource - a wider data-set from which to choose the most appropriate reply - but for a new gardener it can quickly become informational overload. New gardeners don't always understand the importance of hardiness zones, soil types, or light intensity, for instance, so they bring questions that can't elicit an accurate response because the pertinent information is lacking from the start. Often that information can eventually be pried out, but there may be a series of less-than-helpful responses before that happens.

Finally (at least for this post) some gardeners don't have the luxury of experimentation. If this is a first-time experience, the discouragement that accompanies initial failures can overcome the impetus to continue. A new garden is an investment of time and money and labor, and new gardeners need as much success as possible to overcome the effects of the inevitable disappointments that even seasoned growers experience. Specific answers become important, and experienced growers should feel a certain obligation to be both accurate and tolerant. Many new gardeners don't grasp the complexity of what they are attempting to do. Those of us with a few years of growing behind us can try new things with some expectation of success, or at least of gaining some knowledge, for the "newbys", it may feel like an unacceptable risk.

I have been aware for some time that the prevalence of some weeds and lack of others on a particular site has much to say. That much is very old knowledge. I recently bought a copy of "Weeds, control without poisons" by C. Walters. Fascinating indeed.

Example: I had already noticed over the last few years that in my zone 9 sandy florida soil when the pasture grass is removed and OM of some kind added, a morning glory family weed goes absolutely nuts. According to Walters, these kinds of weeds dominate when the decay of OM is slow and toward anaerobic. This can occur for various reasons, one of them being overly dry soil, which florida sand certainly is. One can easily find fairly large pieces of organic matter in the soil unchanged after years. Adding certain kinds of very broken-down OM (or salt fertilizers) can stimulate crop growth, the trash from which will then fail to break down properly. So the decay chain is wrong to create soil conditions that favor crops and instead greatly favors certain weeds and trees. What to do about it? I'm not sure yet. Climate limitations are very difficult to overcome.

Those of us with a few years of growing behind us can try new things with some expectation of success, or at least of gaining some knowledge, for the "newbys", it may feel like an unacceptable risk.

I don't know about the accuracy of that generalization.

My season-extension activities have been all but labeled heresy by some with a couple decades more experience than me.

I am by no means a "newbie," and am willing to take risk and aware of the consequences of those risks.

However, I have only 20 years of experience gardening, and I do not engage in market gardening.

Some personalities on these forums all but call you stupid to your face for daring to do anything that is outside of the prescribed norms. They try to pretend they aren't saying that you're stupid. They try to say it cleverly and indirectly, and they are wishing failure on your experiments.

(Not talking about anyone who frequents the OG forum, so please don't take exception!)

ralleia - I hear ya! I've garnered a few labels myself, among my neighbors and competitors, and not just because they've caught me peeing in the compost. I'm also not immune from voicing my opinion, sometimes vigorously, and particularly if I feel the need to defend a practice or counter an argument with which I take issue. The dogmatic approach rarely works - there are simply too many variables - and unless you are trying to adhere to a specific set of mandates (as in the organic certification process) it will likely be rapidly and repeatedly rebutted. Experimentation is how progress happens, and should have a place in every garden. Earlier in the season, there were a lot of people eager to start seeds early because of the mild winter, and I was among those who counseled caution. For some of those people, the gamble paid off... I on the other hand, am still watching the snow melt off the beds from last weeks' storm, and don't regret my decision to not push any boundaries outside. Without innovation, we'd still be digging our garden beds with clamshells and musk-ox scapulas, instead of firing up the Mantis. They laughed at Galileo, too.

For the most part, I find this a very civil place to be. (You should see the vitriol I engender in some of the political debates I participate in!) I prefer a little disagreement, it keeps us thinking and makes us examine our own prejudices and preconceptions. The "newbys" are still forming their ideas, others have already ossified, and there's no potential for flexibility.

"but tho' an old man, I am but a young gardener." - Thomas Jefferson to Charles Willson Peale, August 20, 1811

I am glad to hear that I am not alone in my heresy! I have already inadvertently learned a tidbit of new information in my early spring experiments--that being that Cherokee Purple and Tennessee Surprise tomatoes seem a bit more frost-sensitive than any of the rest of the transplants that I am growing. They'll live, but it was an interesting data point to compare.

A little civil disagreement is a good thing to be sure. If we never disagreed, we would not learn anything new from each other.

Stagnation is far more to be feared than a few ruined plants (so long as the the gardener is already sufficiently addicted to the hobby that nothing is going to faze him or her out of the habit!)

gonebananas, I wish you were here to tell my wife that we don't need 8 different fertilizers with different formulations - general flowers, roses, raspberries, bulb food, you name it. How would anyone know what's needed without knowing what's in the soil already? It's just a way to sell more fertilizer. Yes, there is raspberry food! Arrggh.

The two things that work best on a board like this is transmitting experience and giving directions to further information, including plant or material sources.

"Why" or "how" information is often incorrect, or at least at odds with prevailing professional opinion and findings. Not rarely, even the "what" (actual conditions) is so too.

Transmitting experience and help works well though. There is also a bit of pleasant collegiality or comminality of interest, even if sometimes similar to old men arguing at the pinochle table.