A Groundbreaking event - Literally

Last weekend, even though I ordinarily get this done a couple months earlier, I set out to begin breaking ground for the fall garden.  Normally, I would be doing this in mid to late August, but the torrential rains that fell throughout the month of August changed my plans!  Finally, the ground dried out and I circled October 8th to do the work.

I checked my Louisiana Vegetable Garden Planting Guide and to my delight, I discovered that I was still within range of planting dates for many of the fall crops that I like to plant.  Most of the crops had a cut-off date of October 15th for planting fall seeds.  My goal was to work up the entire garden on Saturday, plant what I could and continuing to plant each afternoon after work until the work was done. Some items like mustard greens, radishes and turnips don't have an October 15th cut-off date, so I can afford to wait on those.

I have 24 foot rows that are roughly 42 inches wide.  With my garden shovel, I can turn over the soil four shovel widths, chop up the dirt and then step back and repeat until I'm at the end of the row. Then I start on the next row.

Hey look, I found a SHOVEL-READY JOB!

Since during the spring and summer, I don't have a big hay inventory, the huge tarpaulin that is actually an outdoor billboard sign, got used in an experiment.  I draped it over a big portion of the garden.

Late summer ground covering

The experiment was to see if the tarp would suppress weed growth that normally appears.  I was hoping that the tarp would block the sunlight and eliminate weeds. The result?  Well, look below. You can see the area that was once covered by the tarp.  There were much fewer weeds under the tarpaulin than on the untarped garden area.  Also keep in mind that the difference in weeds between the tarped and un-tarped area would probably be much more pronounced if not for chickens.  If you recall, you'll know that my other experiment was allowing chickens to graze in the garden area and cut the grass.  Had the chickens not been there, I think you would see taller grass in the bottom of the photo, amplifying the good work that the tarpaulin did in covering the ground.

Rolling away the tarp (top half of photo)

The other noticeable difference in the tarped and untarped soil was that the soil that had been under the tarp was soft and easy to turn with the shovel.  The soil exposed to the weather was more compacted and hard to turn.  The tarp made my shovel-work easier.  There is a slight downside to the area covered by the tarpaulin, though.  The chickens that roamed the garden for over a month put down fertilizer everywhere except the area covered by the tarp.

Turning the soil over

Even though September and definitely October have been drier months than August, the ground was still moist, with big clods of dirt sticking together that had to be broken with a shovel to work into a finer consistency.

Then I put on my work gloves and hand-scattered pelletized agricultural lime over the rows and worked the dirt with my trusty hoe.

I hand pulled any weeds remaining, trying hard to pull them up by the roots and throwing them over the garden fence.  Then I got out my seed inventory and the Louisiana Vegetable Garden Planning Guide and began sowing both purchased and saved seed.  I may go into that in a little more detail tomorrow.  I was very tired after turning all the soil, but I felt good and energized and I slept deeply and peacefully, happy to have the garden soil worked and anxious to start planting.