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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Monday, January 20, 2025
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Little Ketchup
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Grittyville, WA
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Entry 16 of 30 |
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Excuse me for lazily using my foot for scale.
Soil test tube #1. Gotta pull out three more of these tubs and carefully fill them all with dirt in a "core sample" manner to test my current garden situation. The tube is 32" tall and about 8" wide. I think I can nearly exactly recreate my soil profile and then see the roots develop, and see the plant develop, and see how they may or may not do better with the various changes that I could make.
The soil has done fairly well for me in the past, I've twice grown 2200 + lbs of pumpkins in 800 sq ft or so... But it does feel like my "12 inch depth" soil is maxed out. Ive worked it a bit deeper near the "crown" roots but its not Travis-deep yet...
I believe in the advantages of no-till but I could rework the soil and then re build the soil health. I more or less know what I'm doing at this point, to where I think could heal the soil after damaging it. I do believe the soil biology has to be ready and that it has to want to grow a big pumpkin. The pumpkin plant can do half the work, but the soil biology does the other half. If the soil biology was badly disrupted then the results would only be half of what they ought to be... Or I'd have to work twice as hard to still get a good result.
I guess what I want to test is, would it grow a healthier happier more robust plant to rework the soil (with an excavator). I can broadfork the top 6-8" and this is probably fine for tomatoes but if I wanted a Travis sized pumpkin, I might want to dig down 32" ??? Right now the roots can only go down 12-18" generally speaking... which is probably ok if I'm using drip tape and irrigating daily. Hmm. I can push some really nice growth... But to grow a true monster...? Hmm. This is where my knowledge ends and I dont know the answer.
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