Conditioning the one acre field we have marked out for growing garlic next year is coming along. Wood chips have been added, now it is time for wood ash. This material contains many kinds of minerals, and also can help to shift the PH of the soil to a more alkaline level. This is our bigger plan for the farm, and hopefully growing the garlic in the beds will go well right now. So next year we will do it on a much bigger level.
Garlic likes a more alkaline soil than most other plants. So we hope we can raise it to a level where the garlic flourishes and the native weeds struggle to grow. By adding paper ash we should be able to accomplish it, maybe not with just one load but over time if we add enough it should change the soil chemistry.
The truck arrived from the local paper mill, a byproduct of making paper is ash. So I can buy it and have it dumped where I want it.
With the pile added to the middle of the field, soon I will go out in the skid steer and move it all around.
After I spread it out, its time to bring over the tractor and tiller attachment and mix it all into the native soil.
During last winter, I brought over tractor buckets full of ash but it did not even move the needle on my soil tests. So this time I added a dump trucks worth of wood ash, hoping that will do the trick.
After I mix it into the ground many times, it will be time to do another NPK test and PH test on the soil to see if it has changed at all.