@baymule remember
@ducks4you lives in Illinois with 6' of black, heavy top soil. ... I'm from Illinois idiot dirt, translocated to a gravel pit in Indiana. Completely different techniques needed.
I need to correct you about the quality of our soil. (
@baymule will like this!) I Used to think that our soils north of Interstate 70 was idiotproof, but I have learned a LOT from talking to agriculturalists here over the years. When I was 7yo and we were in the car relocating from West Chester, PA to Chicagoloand, I saw the tilled up end of season black dirt, and I was impressed. I learned that the glaciers had compressed vegetation and created said dirt and that the farmers loved it. Since then I have watched farmers plant corn, then beans, then corn then beans, etc. for years and years and years on the same fields. I have watched them use chemical fertilizers and if it's windy and you drive through it your eyes sting. NOBODY around here rotates their crops anymore! I did a quick search (which is easier than digging out my notebook from an environmental class that I took 15 years ago!!) and just rotating in a 1 or 2 or 3 year crop of straight alfalfa would fix enough nitrogen and feed a corn of crop better than using any chemicals. Hardly anybody close to my house has invested in electric fencing and allowed cattle to glean the fields after a corn harvest and manure that field. ~3 acres/5 acres of my property was a corn field and I KNOW how much corn is accidentally dumped during harvesting, much more than you would think.
You can get 3-5 cuttings of alfalfa here every YEAR and could charge to ship it to cattle owners who are experiencing a drought and THAT happens every year, too. Horse breeders would pay top dollar for it in a bad year. You could pay for the balers, etc. and the storage building to store them in one season. MY hay man puts up 40,000/bales a year, more or less. It's just much more work than a single tilling, then a planting, then a harvest. A LOT of farmers enjoy a semi retirement and often fly to Florida every winter when they have nothing to do.
Hijacked my own post! Anyway NO soil retains it's tilth without proper stewardship. Our black dirt topsoil varies in depth from 3 inches deep to 18 inches deep, and we get a great deal of wind. Yes, YOUR dirt blows onto your neighbor's field. Still, 3 inches of dirt will expose one foot of clay, and no fertilizing results in no usable soil. It is not guaranteed.
My plumber replaced our intake pipes last October. Good thing we wanted better water pressure because it was only 2 foot deep, NOT below the freeze line on a cold, cold winter. NOW it is 4 feet deep coming into the basement and the soil is exposed. MOST of it is clay. I am waiting for it to compress, the I will be mixing it compost before I reseed with grass.
I intend to leave my property with more compost and fertilizer than it needs. It won't last forever, but I want to be a good steward, which also makes MY gardening easier.
