Improving The Soil

I don't know what happened to that last post. It is a collection of my favorite photos, set into a movie. It posted, but, for some reason, I can't get it to play. Oh, sigh.
While Amber and I were in California, I was able to get some baby lily bulbs from Tansy's front yard. She has got some beautiful lily flowers that some military wife planted, before she and Jacob got there. I was totally amazed and awed at the quality of the dirt in Monterey. Here, we have clay, which is good in its own way, (it's good about holding water), but it is absolutely back-breaking to try to dig, plow, or otherwise generally disturb in any way.
When I started digging in Tansy's flower bed, I was totally amazed at how easily the shovel went through the dirt. It was so crumbly, and light; I could have dug a hole to China in just two hours, it was that easy! You can, however, improve the soil where you live, if you are not so fortunate as to live in Monterey, where the soil has the consistency of lumpy flour. (I swear to you, it was that easy to dig). Improving the soil where you live is not a complicated matter. What I did in my garden this year was, when we built the raised beds, we put a mixture of clay dirt, and bagged top soil. At the time that we put the beds in, we had a man out there with his big tractor, clearing off the spot where our new house was to go. I told him while he had his tractor there, and was disturbing the dirt anyway, to take a good truckload of topsoil down to the garden area for me. Topsoil is great for planting in, especially if it has lain fallow for a long time. Forest topsoil is fantastic; all the leaves and pine needles and other forest debris that has decomposed over the years, is just brimming with wonderful nutrients to grow plants in. Topsoil is a lighter color than the subsoil. It is more crumbly, easier to work, with lots of compost and castings in it. So, I don't think that what the guy put in our garden area was exactly top soil. It was just as red as the red clay that was all over the rest of the place. But it was there, and seeing as how I didn't have the money for a dump truck load of compost or topsoil, I figured I'd just have to make the best of the situation. So, we tried to mix equal amounts of dirt and bagged top soil, and compost, (bagged at this point, because I didn't have enough compost made for three, thirty foot-long garden beds.) Filling those beds in was some more kind of hard work, let me tell you. Hauling the dirt to the beds, dumping it all in, and then mixing the dirt and topsoil together. And, I knew that I didn't have enough top soil to do the job correctly, but when you're on a strict budget, you do the best you can do. I was hoping to do what I could this year, and slowly try to improve year after year, which, actually, is basically what all gardeners do. So, we got it mixed the best we could, and planted, and we actually had a pretty good garden. (We are NOT going to talk about critters at this time). My plan this next spring is to shovel some compost on the top of the beds, work it in, and see what happens this next garden season. Now that I've got the bulk of the dirt in the beds, hopefully the rest shouldn't be as hard to do. I've got a fairly decent compost pile; a neighbor has horses, and I helped clean out the stalls so I could take the bedding and "other stuff" for my compost pile. It has gotten kind of soggy, which compost is really not supposed to do, but I figure I can salvage it by shoveling on a layer between now and spring, so it will have a chance to dry out and finish breaking down. (But first, I have to get all the debris from last season out of the way, sigh.......) That's my plan, anyway. Happy gardening.