Can I put a garden in an old horse paddock?

[pixiechic]

Hiya,
A little over a year ago, DH and I bought a small 5-acre farm in north Georgia, and we're finally ready to do some gardening on it. We've been talking about where to begin, and we have several acres of wild pasture that might make good gardening, but we'd have to have it bush-hogged and fenced first (we have lots of deer). Economically we're about a year away from being able to do that.

Last weekend DH suggested that we try gardening in an area that used to be a 30-foot round horse paddock (there have been no horses in it for 5 years or so). We could start with a small veggie garden in the paddock, and then in a few years, make that a more formal round herb garden and use part of a pasture as a larger veggie garden.

Using the horse paddock as a garden has pros and cons.

Pros:
- Close to the house
- Close to the water hose
- Right next to the chicken yard (for easy poop composting; plus we can let the chix in there to scratch and turn over the earth, and to clear out weeds at the end of the season)
- It's already well-fenced - 6-foot board fencing lined with 4-foot welded wire and two gates
- It's flat and open

Cons:
- The soil in the horse pen is a base of GA red clay, with sand on top used for grading. Grass and weeds grew well in it last year (I had to mow it a few times) but I'm not sure how well it would support veggies. We've had droughts for the past few summers, so it's pretty hard, dry stuff.
- The paddock is mostly surrounded by trees, so it won't get full sun. We can cut back some of the pines, but only on one side. It gets a good deal of sun now, but only about half a day when the leaves are on the trees.

The pros far outweigh the cons, and we could solve the soil problem with raised beds, but I'm most concerned about sunlight. Is that a deal-breaker, here in the South? Would we be better off using this area to expand the chicken pen, and delay the garden until we can pick an area in absolute full sun? I'd like to figure this out before I spend a lot of time deciding how to lay it out and what to plant...

 

[patandchickens]

On general principle I'd say anything that decommissions a 30' roundpen and makes it unavailable for future residents of your property to overstress their horses' joints in, the better :>

ANYhow, on the GARDENING end of things <g>,

- The soil in the horse pen is a base of GA red clay, with sand on top used for grading. Grass and weeds grew well in it last year (I had to mow it a few times) but I'm not sure how well it would support veggies. We've had droughts for the past few summers, so it's pretty hard, dry stuff.
- The paddock is mostly surrounded by trees, so it won't get full sun. We can cut back some of the pines, but only on one side. It gets a good deal of sun now, but only about half a day when the leaves are on the trees.

Normally horse paddocks in clay areas have terribly compacted soil but the sand footing in the roundpen has likely saved it from the worst damage. The edge (track) will be the worst. If you can go out and loosen up the soil any, even just stick a shovel in every foot or so (as deep as you can drive it) and wiggle it back and forth and let the sand re-fill the crevice, that will help. The ideal thing would be to move all the sand to the side (part of the area at a time) and run a tiller thru -- normally I am anti-tiller but will admit that they do have occasional legitimate one-time use <g>. Basically anything to break up the clay pan. As organic matter gets worked in over time, that will improve it further.

To me the only real problem would be if it (the whole thing, or just the track part of it) floods during summer storms - do you know? You get that sometimes in roundpens, and if that's the case in yours you may *have* to use raised beds unless you can fluff/regrade enough to fix the problem. Otherwise I would say that, without having actually SEEN your site, it doesn't sound like too awful much problem to me.

I'm most concerned about sunlight. Is that a deal-breaker, here in the South? Would we be better off using this area to expand the chicken pen, and delay the garden until we can pick an area in absolute full sun? I'd like to figure this out before I spend a lot of time deciding how to lay it out and what to plant...

Half a day of sun is fine for leaf crops like lettuce, collards, etc (it will actually extend your lettuce season over what you'd get in a fully sunny site). You can probably get some reasonable harvest of some other veggies as well, choosing varieties sensibly. I would not plan on things like corn, melons, long-season hot peppers (well probalby no peppers period), long-season tomatoes.

If you are thinking in terms of an eventual herb garden, though, there will be some real restrictions on what you can grow. An awful lot of what are usually considered herb-garden mainstays really NEED full all-day sun. There *are* some things you can grow there, especially if you are willing to compromise a bit on taste. Lots of nice perennial (well ok, also annual) flowers *like* just morning sun, in the South, so that might be another option.

I dunno, it seems to me you have relatively little to lose by improving the soil in part of the roundpen and planting some shade-tolerant things. I wouldn't necessarily do the whole area -- that is a lot of work investment -- but *some* should be doable, and you can get *some* harvest of *some* things out of it, and something's a lot better than nothing, right? Then if you can remove some trees in the future so it gets more light, you've got a head start, and even if you ultimately decide to put your veggie garden elsewhere, it'll give you an area of improved soil in the former roundpen which is NEVER a bad thing to have around

Have fun,

Pat

 

[pixiechic]

patandchickens, thank you for your thoughtful reply!

Moving all the compacted sand to one side and fully tilling the clay underneath would be a massive job. Since I don't have a tractor it would probably be more work than building raised beds, and more effort than the partial-sun location deserves. The round pen doesn't flood in the summer, although it does get a little soggy in the middle sometimes. Thank you for reminding me of that!

You make a good point about the herb garden as well. I've had crappy luck growing herbs in shady locations in the past, and swore I wouldn't do that again - but I've also had them bake to death in the Southern sun. I like your suggestion of slowly improving the soil in the pen and planting just a few veggies this year-- if it doesn't do well, I can turn it over to the chickens and it won't completely crush my spirit. :/

In the meantime, I will have my pasture bush-hogged this spring, and then I can mark out a sunnier spot (it's impossible to tell how the land lies when it's all overgrown) to invest more time and energy in for next year.