You have to keep in mind that this area was all pine tree forest when we bought the land... and we only knocked down trees and rough graded it into large plots a little over two years ago. Both of the plots in front of and diagonal to the barn were planted with a deer plot food mix ground cover the first year... in which turned into the beautiful deep green clover that it was the past two years. We like to refer to it as a "salad buffet" for the deer!
Anyhoo, even though the clover has infiltrated the ground for two years with lots of good nutrients and nitrates, the soil today is still hard and red clay material-like. Thus, a basic rotary tiller cannot even begin to grab the hard earth... So we brought out the harrower again.
Yes, Hubby finally let me run the Deere... And I have to say it is very liberating to ride the tractor working the soil. (Of course, it could have to do with the super smooth operation of a fine new John Deere product)
After many runs back and forth harrowing deep into the earth turning it over and over (and after giving up on our piece of crap tiller), we then pulled the box blade around and then the "drag" around to smooth out the earth as evenly as possible for planting.
And then when it's really time to get down to business and get it as smooth as possible, Hubby gets creative in weighing down the drag! Can you see the homemade weights (CMU blocks)??
All of the above took place over the course of roughly six hours.... so you can see the work that goes into preparing for planting. We did make the executive decision to only plant this one plot this year. We will keep the other larger plot next to this one full of clover for now... the honey bees will thank us!
Planting post up next!
