Soil Testing Results!

Jar 1                                                                                      Jar  2                                                                       Jar 3                                                                             

Well, the results of my soil testing experiment are in and after much careful analysis I've discovered that I have dirt in a jar!  Ha!

Jar 1 is the native, unamended soil.  It settled quite clearly into three distinct layers: sand on the bottom, silt in the middle and clay on top.  I'm actually a little surprised at the amount of clay in there, I wouldn't have guessed we had that much clay in our soil.  It's about a 1:1 mix of clay and sand, though.  I wonder if that's why I was fooled?

Jar 2 is from the veggie garden and appears to just be a mess.  I really can't see any layers at all.  I've been adding finished compost (made of straw, horse and chicken manure, gardening waste and whatever kitchen scraps the chickens and ducks don't eat) to the veggie garden for two years.  So, maybe no layers is a good thing?  Maybe I should have paid more attention in that ecology class I took in college....

Jar 3 is from the horse's pasture.  The horses make many, many daily contributions to the soil out there.  There appears to be much less sand out there, but the other layers are just sort of muddled.  I don't know what that means.

I'll leave it to the experts to analyze.

Head on over to The Great Soil Experiment Meme hosted by Sweet Bean Gardening and check out what smarter people than me have to say about soil testing and their own results!

Rub A Dub Dub...

Ducks in a tub!

Cheap Soil Testing

Sweet Bean Gardening had a great idea for a really cheap (pretty much free!) way to test your soil composition.  Then, she expanded that idea into a meme!  That's pretty darn cool!  If you want to join, head over to her site to get the instructions, then post your results and we can all compare soil.  Fun!

So, how do you cheaply and easily test your soil composition?  Well first you take some dirt and put it in a jar.  Then you add water and salt and shake it all up.  Once it settles, there will be three layers: the top is clay, the middle silt and the bottom is sand.  Easy peasy!  The only question I had was "kosher salt or sea salt?"  I went with sea salt.

Now, being in NJ, which is a coastal peninsula, I already know my soil is pretty sandy.  But I've spent the last two years liberally applying compost to my veggie garden and wanted to see what, if any, improvement I had made.  So, I made two jars.

Jar 1 is from an undeveloped part of the property.  It's just the native soil.  Ironically, it is also the only place where flowers are blooming:

Jar 2 is from my veggie garden. 

Then, just for fun (and since I had a third jar, anyway) I decided to take a sample from the horse pastures.  We don't add finished compost to the pastures, but the horses do make quite a bit of, *ahem*, contributions to the pasture soil.  I wanted to see if their many contributions have made any impact on the soil composition out there. 

Of course, being me, I started my jars later than everyone else and they still haven't settled.  (It's been rainy and cold here.  It even snowed this morning!  Who wants to go out in that to collect dirt?  I've got a good excuse....)

I'll update with the results soon......

Still No Flowers Blooming....

But we have brand new baby chicks!

Spring must be here!

Close...

Pansy, overwintered from last fall.

Everywhere I look flowers are blooming.  Not on my property, though.

Sand Cherry, Prunus x Cistena

We have a bit of a microclimate thing going on here.  We're situated in the middle of several wide open fields and tend to get a lot of wind.

Ornamental Weeping Cherry

 Even though we also get a lot of sun, it seems that we're always a bit colder than more sheltered areas.  So, even though there are daffodils and fruit trees blooming up the street, my flowers are hovering right on the brink.

Ornamental Pear

 Oh well.  They'll bloom in their own time....

Daffodil

A Seed Starting Disaster

Seedlings on the porch... pre-disaster.

Our property is subject to high winds.  I know this, and yet I did something dumb anyway.  I put all my indoor seedlings on the porch to soak up some sun, but didn't weight down the bin they were in.  One particularly strong gust of wind sent my tender seedlings flying right off the porch.....

Poor little seedlings!  But, all was not lost.  I only lost the herbs and half of the tomatoes.  The herbs can be re-started, and I had started more tomatoes than I needed anyway.  It's still disappointing, but not a complete disaster.

The veggie garden, all tilled under and ready to go.

I've started working on the vegetable garden bed for this year.  It's always a blank slate, as we till it under with the tractor every spring.  So far, all I've done is stake out where the beans and cucumbers will go and put in the raised beds for the lettuce.   It's time to start planting the cool season veggies, but the weather is being less than cooperative.  Some days it's warm and sunny, some cold and rainy.  Not much gets done when it's cold and rainy, and when it's warm and sunny the list of chores is a mile long.  Such is farm life, and I wouldn't give it up for all the sunny days in the world!

Supermoons And Ducks

This past weekend the full moon was closer to the Earth than it had been in 18 years.  It lit up the whole property like dawn.  It was truly amazing to see the moon rising through the trees.  Even more amazing how the camera was able to pick up the landscape hours after sunset.

 I wandered out to take pictures of the event.  The moon was bright enough to illuminate the whole yard.  As I sat in the lawn, snapping away with my camera, I heard the unmistakable "slap, slap, slap" of webbed feet.  The ducks had come to see what I was up to.

The chickens go to the coop at night and go to bed.  Not the ducks.  They're party animals, wandering the yard doing very important ducky things.  I always give them a handful of grain when I go out to the barn for the last night time check of the horses.  It was after night check when I went out to take pictures, but the ducks must have thought they hit the jackpot.  Surely I was out there to bring them another snack!

Eventually, they realized that I wasn't going to the barn to get them a snack and wandered off into the night to do whatever ducky things they do.

I snapped one more shot of the moon illuminating the night sky, then went back to the house.