Along with the lime, I am having wood chips added by the truckload to my upcoming garlic area. Tilling these in the ground should have a beneficial effect on the soil in a year or so. This is just the start though, as we plan on adding hay as well into the ground to make for lots of biomass to break down onto the field and hopefully start to build good soil over the long term. Want to get above 5% one day. Raising the organic content percentage in the soil is the goal here, so adding lots of wood chips will be a good start.
With one acre of planting, we are having 10 truckloads of mulch added. We already have 5 truckloads of lime, we can see the white stuff spreaded across the field. Soon I will do the same with the mulch the best I can.
A local tree removal company supplies me the wood chips. Honestly they cost a lot less than I expected. And I think should be a good investment in getting the soil in good shape for the garlic.
Takes them about half a day to bring it all over. They have trailers they use along with trucks with beds in them. They can dump the mulch using their hydraulics, I was really impressed by their trailers and how they operated.
Hanging out in my UTV waiting for the loads of mulch I check out my dashboard. So cool.. Lots of good telemetry.
After they drop off the last load, I come back with the skidsteer and the bucket and move around the mulch piles. Takes me a few hours to move it all around.
I spread it all out the best I can, but its still pretty spotty. But thats okay. Soon we are going to go over the area with the tractor mower to cut back the milkweed before it flowers. And then till it all into the ground. The tiller has these blades in that turn over the soil. So mixing it all up over and over again should get it in good shape I think.
Its all coming together, really happy that we are conditioning the fields before planting. Will it be enough? No idea.. I hope so. But we can add more fertilizer later when they are growing.
So next is to mow all the milkweed, and then start tilling it all in. The tilling will need to be done probably a dozen times or more to really mix it all in well. But once done its time to consider a cover crop until its time to star the garlic.
Once it is all mixed in nicely, I plan on ordering a soil test from a lab recommended by my garlic supplier. They suggested I do a test called the haney soil health test. This will tell me what is available in the soil for the plants to use, and we can adjust what is needed before we plant.