Re Making Hard clay soil workable . One good cover crop is tiller radish (diakon) You plant in fall at least 60 - 90 days before a hard frost . The roots will grow down up to 2 feet and die with the frost , they reduce compaction, and provide organic matter and quickly rot . You need to add nitrogen to promote their rapid growth. Another thing you can do is add powdered gypsum ,wet down and till in fine pinebark. There is also a liquid gypsum you can apply with a hose end sprayer . When you till clay soil it is necessary to have the right amount of water to keep from damaging soil structure. Any kind or free organic matter helps you can use powered charcoal , used coffee or tea grounds , any type of manure , mulch , sawdust compost , leaf much , after tilling or amending soil add about 4 inches of mulch such as tree chipper mulch, grass clippings or leaves. Within 1 year soil should be workable . As far as rocks, they will surface every time you till , just set them aside and after a while the amount of rocks will decrease . As far as tilling hard clay wait for after a hard rain and bust soil with railroad pick or garden tiller and it will be slow going the first time . If you take a handful of soil and make it into a ball ,and throw onto a hard surface it should crack a little but not turn to dust . Do not try to till when too wet or too dry . Another trick is to get a 2 foot long drill bit in hammer drill and drill holes in fall and fill with water , when water in holes freeze it will help to soften soil . Some crops such as carrots and beets are better grown in raised beds until soil becomes more workable .

A few questions and a few tips from a DFW gardner. How much light was the kale getting? It seems like it is in the shade during your video. I haven't performed my soil test yet but when I do I will add it here as I also live in DFW and do not have the stunted growth that you showed in your videos. For the nitrogen think about possibly doing a green manure next winter. It covers the grown with beneficial plants that you till into the soil which helps to fix the nutrient levels without adding so many fertilizers and costs a lot less. I have included a link for more information on green manure. Here is a link that might be useful: Green Manure

Ooh I see. Thank you so much for your help! I planted garlic yesterday and I think that is all I will plant in the winter, edible wise haha; The cold and rain doesn't really motivate me to go outside as much as the summer weather does, to garden haha. I hear that that rain here washes away our soil, I don't know if that compacts it too. I have some native soil in the bottom of some of the beds, which maybe why it becomes hard during the winter. I do have one new raised bed though that is mostly full of veggie gardening soil from a local nursery and is very loose, so hopefully that will be easy to spade in the spring. I am still waiting for my cucumbers, beans, and peppers to die off then I can try putting cover crops in those beds because the nursery manager said that we can plant cover crops in our area until mid-November and that I should wait for my plants in the beds to die off first. I live across the river from Portland, in Vancouver. Although, I want to try bringing in at least one jalapeno pepper to prune and transplant in the spring. Do have experience or know how to do that successfully in our area? I have watched videos about it, but none of them were in the NW. Maybe the location doesn't matter though. I almost forgot to say that I bought some crimson clover and dutch white clover to try to cover crop with. The nursery said to watch for birds, so they don't eat the seeds because you don't cover them with dirt. If so, it's very little dirt he said. You learn something new every year while gardening! :-)

Thank you for the photos and sharing the idea! I'm inspired as I like the idea of growing my future wheat straw mulch right along my rows of vegetables! "harvest the wheat tops with a battery powered hedge trimmer" Exactly how does that work for you? Don't the cut wheat heads fall into the still standing lower parts of the wheat plants making the heads hard to find and pick up by hand? Possibly you could put a wide (snowplow-like) ">" on the front of your tractor, and run it down the center of your wheat rows. The wide ">" would push the wheat plants sideways so the tractor wheels would press down the crop laying it into the tomato plant rows. Then you could walk down the tomato rows (with the pressed down wheat straw) moving the straw to both sides of the tomato plants. With pressed down wheat straw also coming in from the opposite row overlapping - it would make a wonderful thick mulch. No need to cut with your sickle bar and then move the straw around into the tomato plants. If you have a source for your future winter wheat seed (without saving seed from your strips of wheat) just lay over and press down the rows of wheat plants before the wheat heads mature. On second thought, if you lay over the green growing wheat it would produce fermenting odors. Mature (dead) wheat would not produce fermenting odors. Lola