Working Ground

Tires are probably just for additional smoothing...some crops / places like really smooth.

Other places like lots of deep ridges to help trap rain.

A winter crop would just go down like seeding grass, just not as fancy...local farm store be it a coop, Agway, or Tractor Supply or whoever should have something.

I do tomatoes from seedlings from the greenhouse. The rest I can seed direct. I work weird hours sometimes, and I've always lost seeds I started indoors myself when trying to transition them outside...they end up staying out too late and catching cold.

Some amendments, especially lime, are best added in the fall so they're ready in spring.

If the soil is low on organic matter (that's more a qualitative test -- seeing what it looks like rather than a chemical test) you might even want to plant a crop like winter rye or clover that will be turned over as a green manure come spring.

As to the plow v. disc v. harrow...

The plow turns over the soil, helping to incorporate air (oxygen), help even nutrients between levels, and helps to bury weed seeds where they may germinate. Of course...you'll bring up last year's crop of weed seeds to the surface :)

The Disc is most likely a Disc Harrow, and I'm assuming the "Harrow" is a tooth harrow. Both do the same job, preparing the surface by breaking up clods and roots and such.

Unfortunately for my back and antique tractor use (although it's good for my health...err, that's what I keep telling myself...) I have to raise all my stuff in raised beds.

My preference is to turn it over with a shovel in the fall (the equivelant of plowing), rough rake it to knock down anything standing up high (equivelant of discing it), and through a light layer of grass clippings over it to keep rain/wind damage down.

As long as you're not needing a winter cover crop for green manure, and your site isn't subject to erosion from water or wind...I like turning it in the fall. With luck, the weed seeds near the surface will get wet and freeze to death over the winter and the earthworms and such can work all spring without disturbance.

Come spring, maybe lightly harrow it again with the disk or tooth harrow and prep the surface -- an inch or two is fine, since that's planting depth for most things.

Having plowed & harrowed in the fall, you'll also be in a good position to plant early season stuff like peas and lettuce even if the ground is still too wet to get in with a tractor. In northern latitudes, having clean, plowed soil will warm up earlier in the year too. So maybe you have to hand rake and plant these early season ones, then harrow the rest of the garden as it dries.

Even if you can travel over wet ground, it's usually not good to work the soil when it's dripping moist. There's a fairly complex phenomena called Compaction. Part of that is machines compressing it as they drive over it; but more thoroughly it includes a variety of things that break down the soil's "fluff" factor -- from losing earthworms, to fungi that grow in the soil, to not enough organic matter.

Working the soil with equipment also contributes to soil break down -- and modern stuff sometimes spirals the cycle...plows and harrows are used more and more intensively to "fluff" the soil while at the same time contributing to the soil's natural inability to be fluffy. So while it's necessary sometimes, gotta time it right to minimize the danger. Over time, done well, you'll need less and less tillage.

As for timing, I'd start after the first killing frost to minimize any germination or new seeds in the plowed area.

I don't have much experience with it, but that's what I was trying to show with the corn -- the rain in June definitely whacked my 1st planting, half is stunted, half is OK.

And that's on exceptionally well drained soil.

This pic is a general view -- the corn in the foreground was planted 2 weeks after the corn with tassels already.

It's all fairly uniform, with very little insect damage.

By the way, the corn is growing in the "good" soil; the Tomatoes in the back ground that are taller than the sweet corn are in the "great" stuff -- the tallest tomato plant is now over 6' tall and still going.

This second photo is of the 1st planting...

Notice it's more inconsistent and insect damaged (chewed leaves, nothing major...) then the 2nd planting. Well, actually the "2nd planting" is my 3rd planting -- the week the 1st planting emerged we had flooding rainfall. It killed the original 2nd planting in the ground, and hurt the just emerged 1st planting.

If your soil looks good, and tests good, and you're seeing stuff like the second photo, it could just be old fashion rain hurting you.

(Anyone wondering about the grass clippings under the corn...I have a couple "test plots" I've made testing compost, manure & clippings, and just clippings and some earthworms I introduced today from other beds to see if I can get them established in this one this summer. The clippings aren't thick enough to be a mulch, but enough to keep down rain & sun on the soil which was pretty "hard" relative to the rest of the garden)

Ok, made me walk down to the garden :)

For those without broadband, the file is huge (2.25MB) so you may not want to wait around for it!

This is one of those things that's much more easily explainable when you have your hands on it, but here you go:

The sample on the left is great soil. All but one of my beds is now this quality...and I have phenomenal earthworm action going on to make it this nice. Usually 40,000/acre is considered a great number...I'm routinely counting 4 Nightcrawlers per square foot...or 160,000 per acre...fishing anyone?

The sample on the right is good soil. Can't complain too much about it...

But if you look at it closely compared to the great soil it's more crumbly even though both have received identical watering. And at the same time, it's material is finer with fewer air spaces.