I would appreciate any help from you guys about how to soften/condition hard clay soil. We purchased a new tous home on an acre zone 5/6 Boise Id after living in NE Oregon for 27 years. Our Oregon soil was rich and black with very little effort on our part, just manure on the garden every year, an we did not hardly ever have to water. Here we have hard clay soil that I could not get tilled atall...I ended up chipping out holes in the ground that I filled with a bag of composted manuer then put my bush type veggies in the holes. They are growing well..( cukes, watermelon, tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers, no row crops) and I am surrounding each plant and the space in between with lawn clippings. What else can I do to loosen up the soil? The neighbour has offered their cow manuer but their lot is rather weedy so I am reluctant to accept.

We inherited over 40 roses of different varities on this property. Everything here has been in a state of neglect, we took three three yard dumpsters of trash off the property. I do not know much about roses, except the pink single petal hedge roses I was able to grow in Oregon. A lot of the plants are very tall, over 10 feet. They all have powerdy mildew but not very badly, I have done nothing to treat it yet. I am going to try watering longer less often and see if that helps. I am not sure how to set the sprinkler system..how long how often..and am still playing with that.Several of these roses have not bloomed at all. In particular one with huge canes, some larger around than my fist with tons of new growth on it but no blossoms. Anyone know why?? I have put composted manuer around all the yard plants quite heavily this spring, 2 inches or more but that is aobut all. I am spraying morning glory with a vinnegar soultion and washed the roses daily when the aphids were abundant.
I am new at 100 percent organic gardening but encountered enough health problems to realize it is foolish to do it any other way.

Do grapes need any special care to keep out bugs? We have a ton of them that look wonderful!

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks, Cindy D

We used to have a similar problem with our soil but it is now much improved. Our solution was to till the garden and then create raised beds for the veggies. As we were building the beds we incorporated lots of compost, composted manure and a little peat. We also added a little sand to the beds for those plants that particularly like well-drained soil. Also, I have read that using straw for mulch and then working it back into the soil can help; although, this is the first year we have tried the approach so I am not speaking from personal experience. Anyway, I guess my point is that it seemed less daunting when we were able to think about the project one bed at a time.

Actually, digging trenches around your existing plants & backfilling with compost is one of the BEST things you could do in your situation: good job! Any way to find out what kind of roses these are? Roses are heavy feeders, so piling on the compost was good there, too. Accept that manure from your neighbor, but let it age a full year somewhere; that's a lovely gift I'd take any day. As far as watering roses, I wouldn't ever use a sprinkler; they do so much better if you don't let the leaves get wet when you can help it. Soaker hoses or hand-watering UNDER the foliage onto the soil will save you much heartache from black-spot & mildew. The first 3 years of organic gardening are the only really hard ones; please be patient with the process of regaining a balanced eco-system in your garden; it does take some time but is well worth it. Once your soil is rich with organic matter & you have a good mulching system down cold, you will have strong plants that can withstand most disease & bug attacks, and have to eater less & weed almost never, & a host of beneficial garden friends like birds, & earthworms, lacewings, ladybugs, mantises, & bees to make your job easier. It takes a couple of years to accomplish this, but no longer than that.

please be
> patient with the process of regaining a balanced
> eco-system in your garden; it does take some time but
> is well worth it. Once your soil is rich with
> organic matter & you have a good mulching system down
> cold, you will have strong plants that can withstand
> most disease & bug attacks, and have to eater less &
> weed almost never, & a host of beneficial garden
> friends like birds, & earthworms, lacewings,
> ladybugs, mantises, & bees to make your job easier.
> It takes a couple of years to accomplish this, but
> no longer than that.

This is a very encouraging thought! I understand why it would be, except the weed part. Please tell me how having a balanced system would reduce weeds.

Please tell me folks, if gypsum is right for this problem, I have heard that it is.

Jazzie

I want to konw about the gypsum also!! The back 1/2 to 2/3 of the property is flood irrigated, so making raised beds is not possible. Is the bagged compost I have bought so much of good for the earth? Maybe i should get some of that to start layering on top of the grass clippings in thegarden spot..?? The front lawns that surround the house are all full of rose, lilac, chyanne, hybiscus, snowball, forsythia, and juniper hedges divided very nicely into different areas. The soil in these hedges and the flowerbeds looks like someone has fed it well, a long time ago. I think we may have to rent one of those small backhoe's to dig the hard clay in the back. Couldn't get the rotortiller to dig at all. Any comments on chicken manuer, other than it being 'hot', we live near a egg farm so I could get that fairley easily.

Rasheeda, the mulch layers covering the gardens are a key part of this balanced eco-system, as mulch retains moisture & its decaying encourages the beneficial insects upwards to carry nutrients down to the plant roots, which in turn, attracts birds to root about in the mulch for the insects both good & bad. A heavy mulch layer will suppress almost all weed seeds in a no-till garden from sprouting, & prevent airborne ones from making sufficient contact with the soil to germinate.

Compost the heck out of chicken manure. It will burn unless it has been composted for a year. Take it with lots of bedding material to help even it out. If you use gypsum use very little. My extension office dude told me that it tends to work in the eastern US but it doesn't work on the type of clay in the western US. Can't remember if he said what the difference was.
My soil in SW Colorado is a giant rock. I have been adding compost, horse and llama manure, fresh hay, greensand, bonemeal, dog hair, grass clippings, worm castings, bat guano (very small amounts), eggshells, just about anything that once grew. At first we rototilled like crazy and blended in anything we could find. Now I keep turning in hay, compost and manure at the end of each season. I also mulch like crazy. Mulching has been a life saver in that it keeps in the moisture, keeps out weeds and my earthworms love it. When I started there were no worms at all and now they look like small eels. It make take a year or two but just amend like crazy. Try gypsum on one side and no gypsum on the other. Good luck.

Lindap, after much examination I think four of the roses that are not blooming are hedge roses. they are JP roses (metal tag on bottom of bush) and they look like the hedge roses I owned on another property. they get sun from about 10 am till 5 pm right now. They were given manuer this spring but that is all.

One rose that it not blooming is a very tall 14 plus feet rose that is sending up all sorts of new canes from the root ball. The old canes are very large, and the root ball is as big around as a salad plate. The base of the plant looks more like a hybrid and I do not think it is going wild as the canes do not have underdeveloped leaves and they are branching out as 'normal' but it couldbe a climber.

Today, for the very first time here....I found a worm in my garden!!! I was digging in more mulch and low and behold there was one decent sized one right next to a circle that had be previously dug!! WOW.

Most of the roses are watered correctly...the ones that do get water from the sprinklers are either going to have to be moved eventually or just get that water. hopefully the new schedule of watering longer for less will help.

Cindy D

zone5/6 Boise ID

Found out why no gypsum in Colorado soil, gypsum replaces sodium in the soil with calcium. CO soil already has a lot of calcium in the soil, so the gypsum has no where to go and just collects and becomes hard like clay. Check with your extension office or go online to your local big university extension and they will tell you about your soil. Good luck.

Some older roses bloom just once each year, unlike the newer 'ever-bloomers' that bloom on & on as long as you deadhead the spent blooms. Any chance you missed the single bloom time? I know that long-caned roses bloom much more heavily if the canes are stretched out horizontally (perhaps tied to a fence, or wrapped round & round a trellis like you would kite string, or simply staked down with lily stakes to stretch them out horizontally. Are there terminal buds present? If so, a clean cut right above those on each cane should stimulate some new growth that may result in blooming.

I did go to Arizona for two weeks in June but called my hubby and regularly and got a low down on the yard. I did miss the first big bang of the blooms but he walked around the yard and gave me a blow by blow of each plant. It took a while but he knew how much it frustrated me to leave . The bush hedge type roses did have maybe one bloom per plant, but the large old rose has not bloomed at all. We built a arbour 4 1/2 feet wide, 8 ft tall and 8 ft long through the tall rose to an area that encloses a pond this spring and I carefully pulled the rose canes into the lattice work. Three of the roses on the arbour are blooming heavily, but the one isn't. It is the largest, it is showing the most new growth by far tho. We moved here in Feb so I do not know the plant's history but there are no bugs present except earwigs and a few aphids. They do have some mild powerdy mildew on them...pretty much all the roses do. Should I give it another year???

hi,
As a first time rose grower I came across a site: www.allexperts.com and a rosarian who answered my rose questions for free. I know there are a lot of knowledgable people on the OG list, but if you want more info try this site. The person I questioned is called Lynnette and I was impressed with her knowledge and her reply.
good luck