Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Seed emergence issues

A few years ago, I planted longyard green beans. They came up and grew well. I haven't been able to get them to grow since. Emergence is spotty at best. I'm gardening in heavy clay with minimal organic material. I'm fertilizing with grass clippings to get more in there, but for now, it gets brick hard. I'm thinking that between that and the soil temp lies most of the reason that they don't come up.

So I'm thinking that instead of covering them with the garden soil when I plant them, I'll get a bag of potting soil and cover them with that. Anyone have any better ideas? I could dig a little deeper and put a little layer of potting soil under them as well. My garden is small, and the row will only be about six feet long, so while I could probably start them inside, I really don't want to, and won't do it unless this doesn't work.

Had heavy clay soil in our backyard when we moved in to our present house in 1993. Put in a couple elevated gardens 4' X 12', put some river rock at the bottom then mixed some sand some of the soil and some peat. Works very well.

The clay is heavy, but the drainage is decent. If I knew I was going to stay for a long time, I might do raised bed in addition to what I already have, but I'm kicking around the idea of less house and more land.

Make sure those grass clippings are from a lawn that hasn't been fertilized recently.

Mike

If you have any horse owners near you, go get a trailer load of year old manure. That will lighten up your soil, add organic matter, and give you some fertilizer all in one shot. You will import some weed seeds in the process, but it shouldn't be overwhelming.

And mix in pelletized gypsum with the peat moss or other organic material.

I'll throw in, try planting on hills?
All the above sound good to me.

Organic matter is great stuff, crop wise.

It's not really on a hill, but it's on a ridge, which gives the same good drainage I'd get on a hill. I put down grass clippings once everything is at least 3 inches high. The short season crops like radishes are planted around the cucumber and the mulch goes down after the radishes are out and before the cucumber puts down vines over the area. The clippings are tilled in at the end of the year. I'll have to look into the gypsum. The heavy clay on the farm that I grew up on had an abundance of calcium, so I've been using it sparingly. I just use a little lime on tomatoes to prevent blossom end rot. I suppose that the blossom end rot is evidence that it needs more calcium.

The clippings feed earthworms, so that even though the ground becomes brick hard over the course of the growing season, it still absorbs water just fine because it is full of worm holes. Ideally, I would mulch the grass clippings or run them through some livestock before using them on the garden, but this is easier, it keeps the weeds down, the moisture in, and the worms fed. On the downside, slugs live in it, and I think that it may cause my tomatoes to blight a bit earlier than they normally would.

your method is exactly what i do for beans and carrots. i take a bag of organic compost, mix it 50/50 with peat moss and then dig a little trench and fill the bottom with the mix, then seeds, then cover with the mix. my carrots are beautiful and my beans germinate almost 100%.

Ever run a soil test?

No, I haven't. It's heavy clay, so it should have ore of a tendency for a higher ph, but there's a lot of room for variability within that tendency. I got sidetracked surfing for info on gypsum and found that most garden centers should have ph kits, so I'll probably pick one up. The cucumber hill is still going strong, so it will probably be a few more weeks before I till it up. There are a couple of farms that I drive past on my way to work that put down gypsum, so that, plus the fact that I need lime to prevent blossom end rot on my tomatoes make me think that my ground could benefit from it.