Personally? I would not attempt to double dig our soil. I am in a position similar to yours, but I am cultivating the soil with a shovel and pic axe, removing as many rocks as possible, and I’m adding loads of compost. Its getting better, though slowly. I would like a deeper soil though. Gardening up against trees, tree roots are a real problem in my garden. Thus, I am planning to build up this fall. Im going to dig over my garden area to about 12” removing as many rocks as possible, and then mound up my beds with dirt from the pathways. I should end up with 18” of soil. Then my plan is to layer chicken manure, compost, and straw mulch to rot all winter. I may dig leaves into the soil as well.

Mounding will also solve any drainage problems, normally. But if you are in a sloped plot, be sure to place your beds accordingly so that the dirt does not wash down the hill!!

It’s all up to you, obviously, but just some ideas.

I guess we are lucky to have a good supply of manure from our backyard flock. Overall, its your garden and you should definitely do what appeals to you, but as to mounding the beds, you shouldn’t need manure to raise up the level. Just shovel dirt from the pathways into the bed to raise it up, sloping the sides. You are basically forming a raised bed without sides. If the sides are sloped there’s little or no erosion.

No rocks!!! You are truly blessed. In that case, double digging would not be near as challenging as I’d previously assumed, and if you dont like the look of mounded beds, I would say go for it. One reason I don’t do so is because my soil turns to sheet rock a foot down, in what was already horribly rocky soil, and then I have mats of tree roots below from nearby trees (also cause shade). thats why I’m removing as many tree roots as possible from the top 12”, mostly small feeder roots, and gradually building UP, so eventually I’ll have less competition from trees. Though most crops certainly don’t mind growing with them at the moment. It’s more of an annoyance to me than anything.

What DO you have for a source of compost/manure? I am curious as to how you are fertilizing your beds, as you mention so many crops doing poorly.

I feel for you with those rocks. My mother’s yard is similar in the river valley. Glorious soil all around and she lives on a hill that I think started it’s existence as a gigantic solid boulder and only the half inch of soil over it hides its true soul.

A few years ago I saw a YouTube video of a device a guy made to pull behind his tractor that was a bed former. I’ve seen implements using a disc to do similar but this was very nice because of the uniformity of it all. I’ll probably go the disc route just because money is easier to come by than time for metal fabrication at the moment. I thank you for your insight, it is nice to bounce ideas off of fellow growers of the many beautiful things which can be grown in our part of the world.

I had black gumbo clay two houses ago, and it's both a blessing and a curse. Clay retains water really well, and is full of nutrients if you can keep it well watered so the plants can get their roots into it.

Since you've added woodchips my next question was whether you let them age beforehand. Woodchips will suck up most of the nitrogen from your soil while they're decaying if they haven't been aged. This could be the reason certain things aren't growing rather than the clay. Might save you some time and work if you can get your hands on a rototiller, sometimes those rental places will have one. Or maybe you could hire someone to till your garden area, or, if you have access room for one of those things a garden tractor can drag around, that might be a better choice. If your garden is on a hill you might have them use the furrowing attachment and that will provide you with some "swales" that will slow down the flow of rain water. Clay that is too dry is very much like chunks of concrete.

Some people plant ryegrass in early fall and then till it in during the spring. I tried this and had a holy mess. Last year I had some wheat berries and I cast them around because I wanted to grow some wheatgrass. They grew well and were easy to pull out. Now I have some kind of wild grass, I think it's called "foxtail" and I have found that it holds it's own with bermuda grass and bindweed, which is my biggest garden problem right now, and it's easy to pull out. So I'm thinking it would till in well, too. Someone once said that whenever you have a problem in the garden that the solution can be found not far away and at the time I first heard that I laughed. But maybe it's true....

Have you considered earthworms? Might try buying red wigglers at your local bait shop, anyway that's what was being recommended here and there for clay soils some time ago. I can't say that it worked for me, as we moved before I got around to trying it. Now I'm like Jacob, I have rocks!

Good luck to you, whatever you decide to try. -- ilene

Oh the wood chips are definitely aged and there is more than enough nitrogen available. I don’t fertilize most crops (corn is the exception), my problem this year has been output from the plants not the plant size. Giant beautiful tomato plants and no fruit, etc.

I have a tractor mounted tiller that I use, I’ve tried to use it less and less but too many pernicious weeds grow without it. I also can’t even imagine how many worms it would take to enrich my garden, I do see quite a few in the soil when I dig though.

Oh, well seems like beautiful plants with no output usually means too much nitrogen. In which case, might benefit from tilling in some fresh woodchips to suck some of that out! LOL The folks at the master gardener's tell me that most gardens that have been fertilized in prior years are usually pretty well fixed for P&K as they do not deteriorate as fast as N does and so mostly all that's needed each year is the N. But in your case, doesn't sound like you need to fertilize at all. And I have been told there is concern about runoff from garden areas where there is too much N, as it goes into ponds and streams and kills the fish.

Sounds like your earthworm population will take care of itself then. You will kill some when you till but if you till when the weather is cold they will be down deep, out of the tiller's reach, and it's my understanding they lay eggs and so I'd think it'd be pretty hard to eradicate earthworms with just tilling, once they're established.

I know there are a lot of people who are following a "no-till" method of garden management and I have considered doing that but my soil is not quite where I want it to be yet, and so I do still use the tiller and then I cover over where I have tilled with cardboard and then either wood chips or pulled weeds, whichever I have, to keep the wind from blowing all my hard-won garden soil away. We have been improving our garden soil for eight years now. We've tilled in leaves and wood chips for several years and I keep a compost pile for extra weeds. I dig holes in the garden along established rows and bury the contents of my kitchen compost bucket there.

Do you rotate your crops? Might consider planting heavy feeders in the spots where you have beautiful plants but no output. I think brassicas are heavy feeders and if you can find plants there still might be time to get a crop out of them. Many brassicas will stand a good bit of cold and a few frosty nights. Then you could try your tomatoes in that spot next spring and see how it goes...

As far as acidity goes, I think most plants like it a little on the acid side, don't they? I know I have always been cautioned not to put very much wood ash, if any from the fireplace in the garden because it makes the soil too alkaline. If your soil is too alkaline, though, I think nothing will grow, not even many weeds. I don't know how much we would need to worry about how acid the sub-soil is, you would be a better judge of that than I would. But seems like it would depend on how deep the roots of your plants go.