With a devil-may-care attitude, I ventured into the Swamp Garden this morning, where the pathways squish when you walk and where every inch of ground is too wet. I am pigheaded, though, and not easily deterred. I suspect my soil is as wet as anyone else's at this point, but I do have the advantage of having raised beds contained by wooden edging.

So, being a Garden Fool at this point, I dragged out the Mantis Cultivator and, while walking only in the pathway which at least is heavily compacted soil so it feels fairly solid while still squishy beneath my feet, I lightly rototilled the top 2-3" of soil in the raised bed in which I'm planning to eventually plant onions. The soil actually wasn't as awful as I thought it would be and maybe that's because I had added a lot of compost to that bed several weeks ago. It also was heavily amended last spring because it was the main bed for paste tomatoes. However, even after being fluffed up, the soil still was way too wet for onion-planting this morning. Obviously I wouldn't have used that cultivator on anything but a raised bed with already fluffy and light soil because it would have turned heavier soil into red clay clods of mud.

I didn't even rake the soil after cultivating it. I just left it fluffed up, hoping that the gorgeous sunshine we have today and the light wind will dry it out some. Will sun and wind dry out the soil enough to plant onions in the late afternoon? I doubt it, but I'll keep hoping.

We have rain in our forecast for the next couple of days so I really was hoping to get the onions in the ground today. Now I guess I'd best be hoping that the rain misses us (and it might because it is only a 40% chance tomorrow and then a 50% chance Monday). If the lightly cultivated soil doesn't dry out enough today, I'll try again tomorrow if it isn't raining.

And, every time I try to plant anything in March, we have grass fires. It is absolutely guaranteed, so sometimes the garden day that I planned is not the day I end up having.

Just FYI for those in the Tulsa/Jenks/Bixby area looking to plant this weekend, Charmichael's in Bixby has Dixondale onions for $1.49 a bunch. I bought 3 different varieties, but be aware the bunches are not marked in any way and, to a newbie like me, one bunch looks much like another once you've taken them out of the box. Mental conversation I actually had with myself: "Wait, is this bunch the Candies or the Texas 1015s? I'll just compare them to the Super Stars. Wow, amazingly similar. Now which ones are the Super Stars? I guess I'll just put them back in the box and start over. But which box?" Unless you're a seasoned pro who can tell these apart by looking, you may want to bring something to mark them with as you shop - wish I had, but I'm (fairly) sure I got the 3 varieties I wanted.

My garden was under a heavy layer of mulch. I'm planting my onions in a notoriously dry area. The soil was very wet. The onions that were planted looked great but were grateful for some air and light. The soil is drying very quickly. I'm digging in trenches surrounding 4x4 raised beds. Hoping that will slow the water down along the slope. Something that'll I'll wing, I guess.

I'm hardening off the other onion seedlings while readying the remaining beds. Glorious day. I'm so out of shape, tho.. :\

Rick,

Superstar is the easy one because it has white skin.

Both Texas 1015Y and Candy have yellow skin, but Texas 1015Y is a short-day type and Candy is an intermediate-day type, so your 1015Ys should bulb up earlier than your Candy onions do. I won't swear on a bible that it always happens that way, but that's how it is supposed to work. Also, some years, my 1015Ys are a little more oblate in shape whereas Candy onions are more of a perfect globe. Other times, though, they are about the same shape.

Regardless, you bought 3 great varieties and I think you'll enjoy eating all three of them.

Bon, The soil I fluffed up with the cultivator is drying pretty nicely too, but I decided to wait until tomorrow so it could dry out some more. I'll just have to work hard tomorrow to get the planting done before the rain arrives, and it won't hurt my feelings at all if the rain misses us. Having held them just long, I don't imagine one more day will hurt.

My garlic and perennial onions look fine. You cannot even tell by looking at them that we had snow and temperatures down into the teens. They, of course, have been out there all fall and winter so they were hardened off to pretty cold temperatures, so I still don't regret holding the young onions that were not well-hardened to the cold. Over the years I've been a gardener, I have regretted planting ahead of a cold, snowy or sleety spell far more than I've regretted holding back and not planting.

Dawn

In Grove we had only a light snowfall over a little ice in the most recent storm while many of you were getting hammered. I planted 4 bunches of Candy onions in raised beds today. I didn't till, just used a small hand tool and planted. My ground in the raised bed was just right for planting. My body, on the other hand was ready to stop at 4 bunches.

I know it's a hassle, Dawn, but I'm very grateful to see ya'll are getting rain. You've been so miserably dry and all that. We could use some more, too, but not as bad as Southern Oklahoma and some other areas.

We worked the ground today hoping to get done and get the onions in...But we did not. The tractor is still broke down and having a hard time finding someone to work on it and both tillers we loaned out wont run. But on a great note I got 10 pails of rabbit manure to put in the bed tomorrow. My son said he can fix the one tiller easy with something from Lubbock. I spaded a lot of ground while he worked on the tiller so Monday at the latest we will have the onions in. I am hoping to start hardening off some cabbages starting tomorrow.

I put my onions in the ground today with fingers crossed. While they're late going into the ground, this has been the first weekend we've had with temps above freezing and snow finally melted. My 'little' bundle from Dixondale had 116 slips. Gotta love that company.

So glad to see everyone busy. Marvelous how quickly the weather changed.

Bon, We have had nonstop rain since June 2014, except for a brief dry spell in part of August and September so we've been clawing our way out of drought for months and months. I've had about all the rain I can stand....and, still, we are rated "Abnormally Dry" on the U. S. Drought Monitor, which for us is really nice. Being Abnormally Dry in winter doesn't hurt so much as it does in summer. I feel like all I've done the past couple of weeks is mop up mud off the floor. Every cat, dog and human that walks in the door seems to be oozing mud off the soles of their feet, or maybe thru the pores of their skin. I keep wondering where all the mud is coming from. Then, I look at the lake that is our back yard, and I find the source of the mud. (grin) I hate to complain about winter rain in 2014-15 when we didn't get much at all in 2013-14. So, I won't complain. I'll accept that maybe for us 2015 will be the Year of Mud (which is what we usually get in an El Nino year, along with great garden yields). All winter long I have repeatedly told anyone who will listen that our rainfall feels like an El Nino year down here, whether we have an official El Nino or not. Now, with an El Nino Advisory issued by the CPC, we're one step closer to having an El Nino declared by NOAA. I always have a good garden year when El Nino comes to visit, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

For the time being, we're better of than many other Oklahomans who are in Moderate, Severe, Extreme or Exceptional Drought----a position we seldom find ourselves in. I did see drought creeping into the northwestern corner of our county but I'm hoping this week's rain, sleet and snow maybe will stop it from moving any closer.

It definitely is spring here. Our entire lawn (and I use the term lawn loosely because that makes it sound like we have an intentional lawn, when what we really have is a yard with whatever wants to grow out there just doing its own thing) is green, mostly with dandelions (in bloom), annual blue grass and chickweed. We'll take our green lawn however we can get it at this time of the year, though many folks would look at it and see only weeds. The daffodils were blooming when the sleet and snow began falling and still are in bloom, though sort of droopy. They didn't care for those nighttime lows in the teens with ice and snow sitting on their heads. I imagine they'll perk up a bit more after a few more warm days. Today the plum tree is blooming. The back-to-back snowstorms stalled the blooms that were about to open when the first storm arrived, but now that the ice and snow is gone, the flowers are raring to go. They are pretty and smell so nice, and undoubtedly are blooming too early and will freeze, but that's just how it goes.

My onions pleaded, begged and cried wanting to go into the ground today, and found sitting in a box of soil on a table on the patio did not satisfy their ambitions at all, but tomorrow they'll have their way and will be happy at long last. I don't care if I come into the house looking like a zombie coated in mud, those onions are getting planted tomorrow. I checked the soil I had fluffed up with the cultivator this morning and it was significantly drier near sunset today so its all good.

Our big pond has about 6" of water in it for the first time in ages. It won't last, of course, as the pond has been mostly dry since 2008, but the turtles and frogs will migrate there from the creek and will enjoy it while it lasts.

Once the onions are in the ground, I'll start focusing on getting potatoes in the ground.

I'm glad to hear about the pond. I was wondering. I imagine it will take g'normous amounts of water to fill them up, but one can hope. It just ain't right with them being bone dry every summer.

Do yall trim the tops of the onions before you plant?

I read somewhere that it can help if the onions have been sitting a long time.

Bon, Most ponds here around us have refilled nicely and are near or at peak capacity. Our big pond won't hold water any more. I don't know how to explain it except to say it has lost its ability to hold water. The water soaks into the dry pond bottom really quickly---like the pond bottom is a sponge. It used to be a spring-fed pond, but then after the recurring droughts of 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2008, the spring that fed the pond quit running and even heavy rainfall and lots of it only puts a few inches of water in it. A pond that won't hold water sort of ceases to be a pond at some point and this one is about there.

I checked our Keetch Byram Drought Index number a day or two ago and on that day it was the lowest in the state, at 0 (indicating "no drought") on a scale of 0-800. In the olden days before the spring dried up, the pond would be full when our KBDI was at 0.

Kim, I tried that for a couple of years and couldn't tell a difference at all, so I don't do it any longer.

Dawn

Well Dawn, you may just have to raise pigs for a couple of years and seal that pond Sepp Holzer style. I guess pigs are the perfect animal to seal a pond with because in addition to their manure, they root and and their hooves are great little compacting tools. I guess it works with most any large animal that is confined in the space, but pigs are supposed to work best. I doubt you will be interested in raising pigs (LOL), but maybe you could make that dry pond your wildlife feeding station and let the animals help you seal it. It would certainly be cheaper than bentonite.

Pigs in a pond. LOL

Carole, LOL. Sepp can keep on using the pig technique. I'll skip it. I'm not a big fan of pigs, especially once they get big and mean. Maybe the feral pigs would leave the creek long enough to go to the pond and do the job. I thought about bentonite, but doubt we'll bother. Without a spring running to fill it, where's the water gonna come from? We rarely get the kind of runoff that will fill up a pond, except in 2007 and 2009. I think I'll have to learn to live without the pond. (I don't miss standing on the dock and looking out over the water and seeing a snake swimming in there, that's for sure.)

If somebody wants to do target shooting, setting up the firing area at the shallow south end of the former pond and lining up the targets with the north bank behind them makes it a nice, safe, firing range where the guys can fire off their guns with a good sturdy earth backdrop to stop any stray bullets. Between my guys and their friends, and some neighbors of ours who occasionally do skeet shooting, sometimes it sound like a war is going on around here. I guess that is one of the pleasures of country life----recreational shooting without having to go to the firing range.

Dawn, Same at my son's property, the dam makes a good firing range, but was a mistake for a pond. The ground would have been great for a pond just a short distance away, but the previous owner had his own ideas about placement. He spent a lot of money for no gain.

Oh no, Carol, that is awful. So, his pond isn't holding water? Is betonite a solution for his pond's problem?

I mean to add that about the same year our pond dried up, some friends of ours from the Thackerville area were building a new house maybe a quarter mile up the road from us. It seemed like a new spring popped up right in the middle of their then-dirt and now-gravel driveway around the time our spring dried up. I always wondered if our spring migrated to their driveway. After a couple of years that spring appeared to dry up, and the very-experienced, very-talented guy they hired to drill a well found only dry holes, which makes us all wonder where our water is going. If that particular gentleman cannot find water for a well on your property, it is because there isn't any. Now we're starting to wonder if a certain casino development in the Thackerville area might be sucking up all the ground water.

I put mine in saturday. Just did 1 bunch of 1015y and red candy. Funny how those 2 bunches of 30 end up being almost 100 . LOL. anyways that is more than enough for us and if the weather doesnt take any of them out like last year Ill hopefully harvest about 3 times as many as last year.

Dawn, It doesn't totally dry up, but I think it went so low they it killed most of the fish that couldn't get deep enough to avoid the summer heat. He was recently told by a man that lives a few miles from him, that the man that dug the pond didn't want to dig it and advised the owner that it was not going to hold water but the owner said that was where he wanted it. The house has a full basement and I have wondered if the dirt that came out of the hole was just piled there, since we don't see it anywhere else, and the owner thought it would make a pond dam. He has an area with a lot of clay that I think would have been a suitable spot, but they didn't use it. I am not sure he is going to try to save the pond, but instead dig swales on contour to try to recharge the ground water and then create a few small ponds fed by rain overflow. The land has a slight slope from north to south that leads to a full time running creek below. There is plenty of run-off water coming down the road and from the ag field north of him during heavy rains that could easily be captured. We don't have heavy equipment or we probably would have done earth work before now, but I think he is planning to begin work on it in the Spring. His land is like yours with areas of clay and other areas of fantastic soil with lots of sand content, so not just one kind of soil. We planted hundreds of trees in the sandy soil along the creek to stop some of the erosion, 100 plum trees, service berry, black locust, mulberry, pecan, etc. We also have planted trees for windbreak, but it will be a lot of years before that makes much difference. In the meantime, other owners in the area keep taking out trees, not that they were excellent trees, but even native trees help, especially with wind issues. We have also added fruit trees, and he continues to do that. He has a deep interest in improving the property, so I know it will just keep getting better. Some of the surrounding property is pasture with no owners living on the property, but there is a lot of monoculture ag fields there also. The worst part is that they use chemicals and some of them are applied from planes and I just hate that. Besides making me sick, it makes me mad. LOL

I put my onions in a new raised bed yesterday. Their roots were too long since hubby kept watering them. Some were kind of slimy, so tossed them, but got an 8 x 4 bed done. I want SOMEONE to start harvesting onions, the ones at the store are sprouting or rotting. Nearly all my recipes start with "saute an onion and garlic..."

Amy Me, too. I had planned on putting the onions in today since the beds were ready. Didn't expect rain. Got it. Getting it. I raised the beds and surrounded them with run-off trenches. They should be quick to surface dry. I hope.

I think that I am going to cover my onions because each time I go into the garden I have to replant some plants. The Robins are pulling them out of the ground everyday. I find a Robin in the bed almost every time I walk outside. I think I will be covering them with row cover until that get established. They just tug them out of the ground and leave them.

I got a 4x30 row done, only 2 more to go!

Yay Kim! Today you'll be all finished. And they'll have all week, at least, to be warm and cozy up.

I'm glad onions are hardy cuz by the time I got past 200 I was stuffing them in and saying, 'Here. Now. Don't be an ingrate. Grow. "

Rick, did you end up waiting to put in your onions?

I actually got them in the ground last Saturday during our nice weather. My raised bed dried out enough to where I wasn't putting them in muck. I haven't had the problem with robins pulling them out of the ground yet - the biggest obstacle I had was the neighborhood cat. I was using a tape measure on the edge of the raised bed to make sure I had the rows evenly spaced and I guess the cat thought the tape measure was some kind of toy and kept hitting it to knock it over, so it took a little longer than it should have but it was nice to be outside getting my hands dirty.

I saw the sun for the first time today in quite a while. I hope I can stick some onions in the ground no matter how wet it is.

Sorry about the tape. lol My daughter has latched onto a stray cat. I'm not looking forward to its deposits in the garden this year. I'm glad it wasn't too wet. Early yesterday I was planting in mud, but by the afternoon it was quickly drying up in the beds I had elevated.

Yeah, Larry. I was thinking the same way yesterday morning when I got started. I'm glad you've gotten some sun.

One year I put chicken wire over my hoops to keep the birds from yanking up the onions. (I believe they are looking for corn because they do pull up young corn sprouts looking for the corn seed's kernel.) I've also used the green plastic garden netting fence-like stuff that looks sort of like chicken wire coated in green rubber, but there's no wire---only plastic or vinyl or whatever it is, and I've used the cheap black plastic netting sold as bird netting or deer netting. I don't have any netting over my onion beds right now, and I haven't had any onions pulled up yet, but it only has been 2 days since I planted them.

Sometimes late in the spring when we keep having forecasts for severe thunderstorms with a possibility of hail, I'll keep netting over the hoops over the onion beds 24/7 until the necks of the early day onions start falling over. I worry more about massive hail damage than bird damage, especially once the onions are bulbing up and popping up above ground.

My bird netting currently is devoted to keeping deer from eating the plum tree's blossoms because yesterday a herd of 5 deer decided plum blossoms sounded ideal for breakfast.

Amy, I don't know where winter onions mature in commercial fields at this time of year, but if it is California, we may be in trouble. It is hard to find good onions at the store (I can tell that by looking at their quality when walking by), and the last few dozen I have here in storage from last year's massive harvest are sprouting. I'm going to plant them in the flower beds and let them flower----the tiny pollinators love those allium flowers.

I believe Vidalia onions start hitting the stores in late April most years, or maybe slightly earlier. Texas Supersweets usually are available around the same time, I think, but I'm not sure. I rarely buy onions since we grow our own, but I try to keep my eyes open and notice when the new, fresh crops are hitting stores.

I still have frozen onions for cooking purposes, but a couple of weeks ago we bought an onion to slice for hamburgers. It has a little rot inside of it. I just should have taken some frozen ones out of the freezer and fried them and put them on the burgers instead.

Ok, remind me when onions are plentiful to freeze some, LOL. I don't expect that I am growing enough yet to get me through the winter. Of course. When I need the frozen onions they will be buried at the bottom of the freezer...

Bon I wish I could have gotten done but cant get it done by hand fast enough but yay a friend is going to let us borrow big tractor and plow the rest of the ground and then I can finish up.
Rick it took me longer with little grandson out there, he thought my row marker, pink ribbon, was a toy to hop over under run off with. Granny had a heart to heart about beds and gave him his own roll of ribbon. So much fun!

Yesterday I was working at home with him and I looked over and he laid flat on the ground in the sun make a dirt angel. He laid there 30 minutes just as content as he could be.

Better get movin gotta go mulch my onions.

kim

That made me smile. <3 Yay granny and lil dirt angel!

I have a question about my onions. I think I received them on the 21st, but I just got them in the ground today. They sat on the shelf way way to long. The weather didn't cooperate and I was gone this past weekend. Most of them were still green, but they are starting to dry out. I planted every single one and watered them in well. What are the odds they make it? They are under a plastic row tunnel and the forecast doesn't look too bad, highs in the upper 60s and 70s with lows in the mid 40s.

They should be fine. In one really awful, wet year I held mine 6 weeks and I'd say 90% of them made it just fine after they were planted.

Onions are pretty tough. Most years, we lose very few, and when we do, it most often is because of wildly fluctuating temperatures over a long period of time after the onions have reached a certain size. I've rarely had them fail to green up, leaf out and grow no matter how long I've held them. I expect your onions will be just fine.

Each year, i follow Dixondales fertilizer recommendation and do the whole trough thing. Each year, it is as though the onions ate starving. My soil is primarily sand. Lottsa sand. I am thinking i need a different fertilizer strategy. All you successful onion growers: what strategy do u follow?

I was concerned too but Dixondale assured me that as long as the bulb wasn't squishy they would be fine. I flooded the bed two days sprinkled with rabbit manure and mulched well. I hope this is good. I really want a huge onion crop to store and freeze for the next year. The ones in the store just don't compare.

My wife went to TLC this morning and they have Dixondale onions! They are all short day varieties though. I have had much better luck with intermediate day in central OK. She picked up some 1015s and I'll plant them for backup.

Planted mine today, along with the fava beans that got way too leggy. Potatoes going in today too only a few days earlier than my grandfather's planting date of St Patrick's day.

luvabasil1, When you use the term "sand" are you referring to something that looks like beach sand? We call it sugar sand down here along the Red River. Or, are you referring to a sandy loam that's a good blend of sand, silt and clay (hopefully with some organic matter in it too) but probably has a larger precentage of sand than silt or clay? My answer would be different for sugar sand than for sandy loam. Also, ever had a soil test to check it to ensure it has adequate nutrition?

In order to get big, healthy onions you need lots of nitrogen for the onions AND at least 21" or rainfall/irrigation spread out pretty evenly over their life span. It is especially important for them to have adequate water as they bulb up, but not during their last couple of weeks of life (as it makes them too watery and they won't store for as long).

I'm waiting to hear from you if you have sugar sand or sandy loam before I go more deeply into what you can do to improve your onions' performance and yield.

Dorothy, I planted my first potatoes today too, but I'm not done yet. I might finish them up later today or tomorrow. It is still a mud pit here.

Dawn

still can't get in my garden to plant anything. We did run over to lowes and get some material to do 3 raised beds. At least I managed to get 3 bundles of onions planted, but they were sure sad shape.

I probably could of gotten across the upper end of the garden if it hadn't of rained this afternoon. Looks like more rain tomorrow . sigh

Oh my. I cannot imagine more rain! My ground is so wet. I really had pushed the envelope to get one row of potatoes in going down a foot. I probably could have reached 18 or more inches were it not so cold and wet.

Thank you, ms dawn!!!!

The sand started red, only sand burs growing, and sifted finer than carolina beach sand. So i ordered soil. The company apparently grinds their soil to the degree each particle is the same size as my red sand. I've been working it for the past 4 years and this is the first year i have worms in the bed! Yes, we test it often to see how long the nitrogen is staying in the soil....it doesnt stay long. We r always lacking nitrogen. Drains way fast, but not as fast as it used to

Thanks for any help.

Robert, I was keeping an eye on the radar and wondering if the rain was hitting your place. I haven't been overly worried about rain as we had only a 30% chance.....overnight they updated my 30% to an 80% chance, and we have light rain already this morning. By late yesterday I could l tell the yard and gravel driveway had begun to dry up some, so rain wasn't on my wish list for today.

Usually my raised beds drain well enough. In 2009, after that almost 13" of rain in one day followed by another 9" over the next 6 weeks even the raised beds suffered, so I bought those round cardboard tubes you use to pour concrete piers and Tim cut them into one-foot lengths. I put those on top of the raised beds, filled them with purchased soil-less mix and planted the last of my tomato and pepper plants into those. As it turned out, most of the tomato and pepper plants in the raised beds made it just fine, but there were a lot of disease issues in that wet year so I was glad I'd planted the rest of the plants, even though they went into the ground late.

I think my onions had a lot of issues that year from extreme moisture, but I haven't had a bad onion year since then.

Bon, If your rain continues, you always could rake the grade level soil up into mounds to plant most things. Raised beds don't have to be formal raised beds with wooden or stone edging----even soil mounded up casually above grade level works just fine. If you get perpetual hard rain, the mounded beds might erode a little, but you can rerake the soil up onto the mounds after the rain stops, or mulch the sides of the mounded beds to help slow down erosion.

Luvabasil, There are different ways to fix what is wrong, none of them easy and some of them no organic.

For the quickest fix, i.e., to ensure a good crop this year, buy a high nitrogen lawn fertilizer and be extra careful to ensure you get fertilizer only as a "weed and feed" product contains herbicide that could kill your garden. For your specific situation, I'd get the highest-nitrogen (within reason) lawn fertilizer I could find----something with the nitrogen number in the upper 20s or low 30s. You'll have to add it to the soil carefully if your plants already are in the ground. I'd probably use a trowel to make a trench the Dixondale way and put the high-nitrogen lawn fertilizer in the trench. I am not sure how quickly that high-nitro fertilizer will wash out of sandy soil but it might last the whole onion-growing season. Or, you might have to add more to the trench a month or two from now.

For a more long term fix, there's two main ways---the orthodox and standard recommended method and a handful of less orthodox but equally effective alternative methods.

The more orthodox and recommended method would be continually adding tons and tons of organic matter to your soil. If I had your soil and this was the method I was going to take, I'd try to find a horse stable or a friendly horse ranch that would let me come muck out the stable stalls so I could carry off the bedding (urine-soaked, so some nitrogen there on the bedding) and cow manure. I'd pile it up all summer long to decompose and add it in the fall to the whole garden. Or, if there's not enough, I'd put it specifically where I wanted to grow onions the following year. Please understand that this process never ends. Because all organic matter breaks down (and extremely rapidly in our hot climate), you never really reach a point where you have enough, so you always have to add more.

In the absence of a source for horse manure/bedding, I'd purchase cow manure or rabbit manure if I could find it, but wouldn't use it until testing it first for the herbicide carryover that gives us what is commonly referred to as "killer compost". Testing would take only a couple of weeks. Then, I'd add it to the soil. You also could add compost (as much as you can make or buy) or soil conditioner (the one I buy at Home Depot is merely a mix of humus and small bits of pine bark fines).

Sandy soil like yours always will drain too quickly but by adding organic matter to it, you can improve it a great deal.

Now for a couple of unorthodox methods: hugelkultur piles or merely adding bags of mulch to your soil with extra nitrogen to offset what the wood uses up as it decomposes or growing in containers.

Using Mulch "Incorrectly". When improving our dense red clay (so dense that it broke every shovel and mattock we used, and rototillers would bounce off the surface without actually digging into the soil) in our early years here, I bought big huge bags of pine bark mulch. Some of the pieces of mulch were were as long and wide as a smartphone. I ignored the conventional wisdom that adding this sort of wood to my soil would tie up nitrogen as it decomposes (it does, but you add extra nitrogen to make up for it) and worked it into the soil. By the time I started adding this stuff, we'd been here improving the soil for at least 5 years so by then there had been enough improvement that we could rototill the mulch into the soil deeply with a powerful, rear-tine tiller. The difference in my crops over the next couple of years was impressive, so I kept adding wood chips for probably another 3 or 4 years. Due to the cost, not every part of the garden got new wood chips every year, but over a period of a few years, the whole thing got some wood chip improvement.

The most shocking thing for me was how quickly all those big wood chips decomposed. Even the largest ones were gone within 3 years, and a lot of the little ones were gone after one year. That's okay because once they broke down, there was more humus and organic matter in the soil for plant roots to use.

Using hugelkultur. Another method I really like but seldom practice here because of our huge resident population of venomous snakes is hugelkultur. This essentially consists of using everything from large pieces of wood (I like tree trunks that are partially decomposed) to smaller limbs and twigs to garden waste (weeds, prunings, dead plants, etc.) to straw, hay, bark chips, compost, manure, etc. to build a garden bed. One common way is to dig a slight depression in the soil that will catch and hold water beneath the hugelkultur pile and then to pile on all the other stuff, topping it off with a few inches of soil (you can use the soil you dug out to make the shallow depression). With some beds, I've used spoiled hay that was halfway decomposed to make the top layer. Because all that wood is going to decompose, you can build it a foot or two or more above ground level. Every year, you just add new layers of mulch on top or you can add a soil-compost mix if it decomposes too quickly and is becoming a sunken depression in the ground instead of a mound. How quickly a hugelkultur bed breaks down will vary depending on how decomposed your largest pieces of wood already were and on how much rain you have.

Three years ago we build four 30' long huglekultur beds behind our barn, using old bales of hay as the "edging" of our large raised beds, and filling them in with wood (deadfall gathered from our woodland), compost, spent plant matter like you'd toss onto any compost pile, some cardboard to help attract earthworms, some soil-less mix from containers that were getting new, fresh, soil-less mix, and a big layer of spoiled hay on top. It has made lovely growing beds where I grow squash and pumpkins. I do have a snake problems in there, but I also have snake problems in all my other gardens so I just work carefully around the hugelkultur piles. One reason I grow pumpkins and squash in there is because they have to grow a long time before you harvest them, so I'm not in there every day like I would be with peas or beans, so that I go into that snake-infested area as little as possible.

This winter and part of last year, I've been dragging tons of compost type junk to the old lily pond to help fill it in, which makes it a sort of sunken hugelkultur at this point. I need to continue adding more stuff on top of it to raise the height several more feet but I hope to be able to plant something there in that area sometime in April. In a few years after it really had decomposed and leveled out with the surrounding ground, I want to build a small, formal potager there in that spot because it is a prime backyard location.

Hugelkultur is a very effective way to fix problem soils. Early in the process, all the wood products you use help hold moisture, so you can see why it would well work for your soil. Then, as the wood decomposes, it enriches the soil and turns sandy soil into sandy loam. I'll link something on how to build a hugelkultur bed.

I built my very first hugelkultur bed in Fort Worth in the 1980s, although I never had heard of hugelkultur at that point. We had that black gumbo clay common there, and it drained slowly. We had cut down a tree that was getting too close to power lines and piled up the wood limbs, cut into pieces of a uniform length, behind the shed to decompose. One day, I hauled wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load of short logs (about 2' long) to my flower bed, dug a trench and lined them up vertically, packing soil into the trench to hold them upright. (Picture a row of big pencils sticking up out of the soil, those my "pencils" were as big around as my arm.) Then, I backfilled the area within that wood edging with partly decomposed wood, grass clippings and some of that black gumbo soil dug from another area where we were putting in a lily pond. Then, I planted and mulched. That bed was incredibly rich after a few years of all that wood decomposing. Once the vertical logs were mostly decomposed, I knocked them over onto the top of the bed one winter and built a stacked stone edging to replace them. I'd never even heard of hugelkultur and had no idea the method I was using was similar to hugelkultur, but that technique completely changed our back yard.

With purchased soil, you often get junk soil that is no better than what you are starting out with at your place. I won't order soil unless I have seen it in person first, and the only way to get what I want is to order a mix that has compost in it. When I rebuilt my brother's Fort Worth garden, I ordered a mix that was 50% topsoil (which meant sand in that case) and 50% compost. It was pricey, but you wouldn't believe how well everything grew in it. I also make it clear to the soil company that I will refuse to accept delivery of the purchased soil mix after inspecting it (in the truck before it is dumped) if they send me junk sand that is not truly a topsoil/compost blend. It has been roughly 15 years since I bought a load of soil, preferring to just start out with the soil I have and improve it myself.

To be honest, the best fix for crappy, fast-draining sand would be to add clay to it, but I don't know of any company that will sell you a dump truck load of clay. And, for it to work, you'd have to add both clay and organic matter at the same time because clay plus sand (without organic matter) = adobe. We have mostly clay in the areas where our house, outbuildings and garden are, and mostly sand in a couple of areas further away. I've always thought I'd have the most perfect soil around if I could take a gigantic mixer and mix together all the sand and clay.

Containers are a good temporary option. If fixing the sand is going too slowly, you could raise onions in a cattle trough filled with a good soil-less mix. I raise gorgeous lettuce, carrots, radishes and other root and leaf crops in my cattle trough. It is one of the black rubber or plastic ones that sits above grade level on metal legs. The one I have is tall enough to keep rabbits from reaching my greens and to keep voles from getting my carrots. I also have had success with all kinds of root crops in large molasses feed tubs that my friend, Fred, gives me. Filling them with a soil-less mix is expensive, but I add wood, hugelkultur style, to the bottom half and put the soil-less mix on top of that wood. I've grown onions, leeks, potatoes, sweet potatoes, garlic, radishes and carrots in molasses feed tubs. You just need a deep enough layer of soil on top of the wood to allow the above to reach their maximum size before they hit the wood.

If you don't have access to half-rotten deadfall wood, you can use fresh, green wood but it will tie up more nitrogen and take longer to break down. We happen to have a woodland area with lots of decaying wood, so I can haul it out of the woods in winter to add to beds as needed. I'd never even think of doing that in snake season, because the one year I tried it, I found plenty of snakes under and in the wood logs.

Onions actually like growing in sandy soil, but the soil does have to be amended well enough to hold both water and fertilizer or the onions will look starved, as you say you've noticed, and won't achieve a really huge size unless you're getting incredibly high rainfall that keeps the sand moist all the time. While dealing with sandy soil is frustrating, once you've amended it for several years, you will change it from sand to sandy loam and your garden's performance and appearance will get better and better every year. With sand, I'm surprised you aren't overrun with gophers, moles and voles.

Hope this helps.

Dawn

Hugelkultur How-To

I am about to come un-glued. It is still raining and my garden is mush. I did mud in 4 broccoli plants by standing on somewhat solid ground outside of the garden and reaching in make a hole with a hoe and then pushing the mud up to the plants. So far the plants look OK, but there is no way I can plant 7 bundles of onions this way.

Oh Larry, that's so sad! I hope you can get them in. That's a lot of onions.

Larry, I just hate the way that the rain is not even giving you a break at all this spring. Please do not look at the radar or the forecast or you will come un-glued for sure. It looks like you're in for a flood of mud.

We are sort of getting the same storm, but are on the far edge of it so only piddly amounts of rain. Unfortunately, even the piddly little amounts start adding up after it rains for 10 or 15 hours. This rain is undoing all the work the sun did yesterday to dry up the mud's upper layers we've acquired over the last couple of weeks. We're back to being squishy again, so I assume you are beyond being Super Squishy. You may be as Super Duper Squishy mud levels by now.

Heavy rainfall in spring in 2004 and 2007 got me started on the road to being a container gardener because in those years, we had so much rain that some plants rotted off at the soil line. We haven't had that sort of rain lately, with just a taste of it for a couple of months in 2009, and I'll be okay if we never have that sort of rain again. By contrast, I think you get that much rain all the time and I don't know how you grow anything there. I've never stopped growing plants in containers, but generally the containers are more for fun than anything else, not strictly required because the ground is too wet.

Earlier this week, I planted my onions so high and dry on top of the raised beds that they kept falling over, but I'd rather straighten up some plants that fall over instead of planting them too much deeper into mud.

I hope your soil gets a chance to dry out soon so you can plant your onions. Right now, my soil is the wettest it has been in March in several years and, while I hate to complain about rain, I have been wishing the rain would stop for a couple of weeks just so we all can get our planting done.

I managed to get another bundle of onions planted in a raised bed yesterday before the rain started. We attended a funeral today in Missouri and it rained all day, both there and at our house. Still we just hit an inch for the last 2 days, but it looks like it will continue for several more hours. I planned to use one of my raised beds for salad greens, but with all of the rain, I think I will consider filling them with onions, and just planting the greens in containers. It will probably be awhile before I can plant potatoes and they are sprouting quite heavily now and look ready to go out, but the ground isn't ready for them.

Larry, I feel bad for you because it looks like you are getting hammered again.

Carol, All this rainfall at planting time is starting to make me nervous. How in the world we're going to get the planting done in anything that remotely considers the proper timeframe is beyond me.

It rained all day yesterday, but at least the rain was light here so it probably didn't amount to anything more than a half-inch. Still, it was the last thing we need as we still had plenty of mud and standing puddles (up to 6-8" deep) from the previous rain and snow storms. Our driveway has big puddles but at least everything except the puddles had begun to dry up. It was so muddy earlier this week that I walked down to the end of the driveway to meet the UPS driver so he wouldn't have to drive up several hundred feet of much-to-muddy driveway. He wasn't expecting me to show up at that precise time, but I was expecting him and wanting to spare him driving through all that mud.

I looked at our forecast and see a lot of rainy days out there next week. I hate to complain about rain since we spend so much time in drought and generally always are desperate for rain, but this March rainfall has lousy timing as it is messing up our first real opportunity to plant since the snow and bitter cold departed.

I'm going to put all my lettuce in containers because our raised beds are so wet that I'm pretty sure the lettuce would rot at the soil level. I don't even want to think about how wet the soil is in areas where we don't have raised beds. The onions are in a bed that drains pretty well, but I don't like how wet it is either.

The Yukon Gold potatoes are in the tallest raised bed we have, and we built it and the bed beside it taller specifically to keep the potatoes well above grade level so I'm not excessively worried about how wet they'll be unless it keeps raining for weeks and weeks like it did in the spring of 2010, 2007 and 2004. I toyed with planting the onions in those potato beds, but then wondered where in the world I'd be able to plant the potatoes....

Ironically, even with almost non-stop rainfall since June, except for a brief dry spell in late Aug. and early Sept., the U. S. Drought Monitor still shows us being 'Abnormally Dry' and I'm sure that is the correct long-term description of our area. However, even if only for the short term, we are currently abnormally wet. The sad thing about dense clay soil is that it can go from very wet to very dry in an amazingly short time and I've been watching Moderate Drought creeping towards our county from our south and east/southeast. While I hope we get enough rain to keep the Moderate Drought conditions from reaching us, I also hope we don't get enough rain to rot the onions.

Dawn, I know. My potatoes are not in the ground and likely won't be for awhile. We have had over 2 inches of rain in the last week with more expected this week. I have only planted in raised beds so far, but I am filling them with onions and have to plant everything else in-ground. We didn't have a lot of rain before this week and weren't saturated like some of you, but the rain is coming at a bad time.

Even my indoor stuff is not doing well this year. We had snow and ice when it was time to start tomatoes, and I didn't want to get out in the shed to gather my 'good' potting soil, so I started with some I had inside. That was a mistake and it dried out way too fast. I finally just trashed it and started another tray with better seed starting mix. I don't have nearly as many transplants as I normally would (of anything). I planted a lot of pepper seed, but just this week, so that is a little late. What I really want to do is work outside but it is too wet to do most things.

Your Love County rainfall is incredible and you have had more than we have had this year. When does that ever happen?

Never? That's when. (grin)

I'm sorry you're off to such a rough start.

You're so right about the rain. It is coming at the worst time and we're pretty much helpless because we surely cannot stop the rain.

At our end of the state, this winter/spring weather feels like 2004, 2007 or 2010, all of which were nice and rainy, and sometimes too rainy. I think it was in 2007 that I desperately began filling 5-gallon buckets and cat litter buckets with soil-less mix and planting pepper and tomato plants in them that were never ever going to have a chance to go into the ground. I remember feeling almost frantic because I had tons of seedlings and nowhere to plant them. I don't want another year like that.

I want to work outside too, but it is so wet that my only outdoor gardening today will consist of carrying flats of plants out of the shade-cloth covered greenhouse into the "sunlight" (and I use the term loosely since it is 100% cloudy) for their appointed hours of hardening off (2 hours today). By next week, everything I've raised inside will be hardened off properly, barring any unforeseen problems, and ready to go into the ground. Or, with rain in the forecast for most days this week, maybe they'll be ready to go into the ocean. It is not often than I find myself with hardened-off plants and with ground too wet to plant them, but that's the scenario I'm expecting.

My soil has has 5 more years of amending now, so maybe even if we stay rainy, it won't be as bad as 2010. And that reminds me......I think that in rainy years I always seem to have more cut worms and army worms, so I'd better make sure there is Bt in the shed.