Soil Question

This is really a city boy question. I was looking at some property near Clarksville Tn. I noticed the soil seemed more like rock and gravel than dirt. One of my high priorities is to have a large garden area, maybe 10,000 sq ft. How do the locals deal with this? I figured it would take at least about 50 truck loads of soil to build it up.

You need to figure the depth for the plants you are going to grow–this is really important to get an accurate volume calculation. Multiply this for the area and get the cubic yards needed of fill. You are looking for topsoil. Call around to suppliers for costs.

The actual question was do the locals bring in dirt or do they fix the dirt they have and maybe
just amend it?

Being unfamiliar with your area, but being a lifelong gardener and small farmer, I’d say both. Use raised beds or a variation, to start, concentrating your purchased topsoil so as to get a start. Compost, compost, compost. And get the existing soil tested- it may be better than you think. Or worse. Consult locals, and drive around looking at what is growing, and eyeball that soil. Plant what grows well in your area. (sigh…tomatoes here are a luxury unless you have a greenhouse)

Exciting prospect!

I think it may just be my growing up and living in areas without rocks. The whole area is farming, mostly mid size to small farms. The property I looked at has no shartage of weeds and grasses growing along with wild shrubbery creeping in at the fence lines.

you can make soil by composting. if you have enough vegetation and wait long enough. if your area is low on fertile soil then you may be competing with others for compostable materials.

a raised bed or container gardening may be the best for nonground cover. no need to have good fertile soil in areas without roots. no need to excavate nonfertile soil or raise the elevation.

This - the soil might be quite good, especially if weeds are growing vigorously.

Another option is straw bale gardening - and the bales will provide great composting material for the following year. I had fantastic results with straw bales last year.

Curious - do you see a lot of field-stone buildings in that area? I have an acquaintance who needed to improve her pasture – she pulled the rocks out, plowed, fertilized and reseeded … she built an entire 4-horse barn with the rocks from the field.

Most likely, the land on the farms you’re seeing were improved in a similar way, it just happened some time ago. It isn’t complicated, it’s just a lot of work. For your own garden, raised beds are a quick fix for rocky soil.

I did see quite a few stone strutures in the area but didn’t think to make the connection. I was entertaining the thoughts of what I could do with all the rocks I pulled from the soil if I decided to clean it up.

Having lived in Tennessee most of my life growing up all I can say is we plowed, plowed, and ran the discs over the field until the rocks were turned and the dirt was better. On the chance there are too many rocks we backhoed and removed them and brought in tons of topsoil.

We never built a stone house but did make a few stone walls around the fields.

or

It depends.

if you were clearing a farm sized place for tilling then you might have enough for house foundations or a storage building.

since you are likely doing a house sized lot that may have been partially cleared already then maybe a planter or fire pit might be what you will find materials for.

What do you want to grow? Quite a lot of garden plants prefer (or at least perfectly tolerate) a free-draining, gritty soil.

I am a gardener too and agree that this is an exciting prospect. But 10,000 sq.ft.in raised beds? That has to be close to two football fields.

Most (with the exception of plants like alpines) do not like rocky soil, especially if the finer particles are very clayey.

If the soil is horrendous as described over the entire property, the alternatives are basically two - improve it with lots of good soil/compost, or grow in raised beds and avoid having to dig all those amendments into the ground and yank out rocks.

One football field is precisely 57,600 sq ft. or about 12 acres.

Maybe not.

Correction: 1.3 acres

Ooooooops! My bad. Typed in one too many zeroes when doing the conversion. :smack: Ok then, to about the 20 yard line. That’s doable.

Still a good sized garden I’d say.

If I buy a place in the country a big garden and greenhouse would be one of the main reasons I would be moving out there. I would like to grow as much variety as I could. In Ca. the question could more easily be answered if you asked what I didn’t grow.

Ok, I’ll bite. What don’t you grow? Note, I live in the Bay Area.

There’s an Univ of TN Agricultural Extension office in Clarksville. They will have the absolute latest and greatest in knowledge of what is growing and can be grown in their county. Here are just a few of their services of interest to gardeners