New plot with hard pan… How to prepare quickly?

[dforrestParticipant]

I live in the green Basque Country of Spain. The climate here is a bit like the southwest of England but perhaps a bit sunnier and warmer.

My town has just started an allotment/community garden program. Each person gets a small plot for 4 years, then there is another lottery and you may end up on another plot or out of the program altogether. My plot is about 30 square meters (300 sq.ft.) on a gentle slope, and gets full sun all day. The parcels are on bare land that was graded about 3 or 4 years ago and mine is hard pan clay with plenty of rocks. There are a lot of restrictions about what you can do there: no greenhouses or cold frames, no permanent-ish structures of any kind, no irrigation systems, no trees, bushes are a bit iffy, they basically want you to grow annuals. And all organic of course.

My main objective is to feed two people’s voracious green+vegetable juice habit as year-round as possible, and then as much of the rest of our veggies as I can, and of course save the world, make a paradise for pollinators and all that jazz. I also need to plan for neglect as we’re usually gone elsewhere for 2-3 weeks every August (of all horrible months to be away from your garden) so I’m interested in trying to ward off total disaster while we’re gone. Since the plot is small it needs to be super-productive.

I’m thinking of the following and would love to get experienced people’s advice as this is my first ambitious veggie garden

–No time to cover and let anything sit/decompose, got to put it together and stick the plants in quickly to take advantage of this season (I only have 4 seasons total)
–I’d like to try no dig, and no cardboard/newspaper weed barrier, but am a bit daunted, it’s rocky clay and the surface is like a tennis court now!
–Raised beds, 1.20m (4 feet) wide and 0.4m or 0.5m (16-20″) tall, oriented north-south (deepish and with sides as I don’t think the carrots will be ready to pierce the hard pan in a few weeks yet)
–Sides of beds will be recycled burlap coffee sacks, overlapping a bit and supported on stakes. Never seen it done before but seems like it should work for a while.
–Lasagna style filling for bed: a bit of EM (Effective Microorganisms) and aged manure on the undug hard pan, 10cm/4″ of hay, 2cm/1″ of manure, 20cm/8″ of straw, 2cm/1″ more manure, topped by 10cm/4″ or more good urban compost
–Biochar: Just a touch sprinkled throughout the layers — a handful here, a handful there (figure with all our rain I need to try to retain nutrients)
–EM-ed water generously throughout all layers, especially the straw and hay
–Inoculate non-brassica plant roots and seeds with mycorrhizae (to help them survive August neglect)
–Mulch maybe with pine needles, something that doesn’t appeal too much to slugs, which are a problem here
–Maybe a more serious mulch while we’re gone in August — 20cm/8″ of very wet straw or something

I’m mainly worried about the no-dig approach to this soil. I don’t have time to “cover and bake” as I’d lose one of my four summer seasons, but with a cap as hard as it has, and rocky as it is, I’m not sure what to do. Will my layers of organic matter in the bed above soften up that hard pan over the course of the next year? I’ll have enough depth this year for the carrots, but I do want the soils to mingle eventually, I don’t want to end up gardening on cement for all intents and purposes.

Sorry for the long post, very appreciative of any insights or suggestions you can offer!

Dave

[charlesModerator]

Great post Dave, you have clearly given the matter some thought, its nice to see you are adapting the various possibilities to your unique situation! Its hard (!) to be sure but I suspect the pan will soften and open in a year or so, meanwhile you have enough goodness on top, perhaps less straw especially as you say slugs are prevalent. If you have any animal- or homemade compost I don’t think you need mycorrhizal additions. Do keep us posted, a photo would be good.

[dforrestParticipant]

Hi Charles and all,

Thanks so much for your informative and encouraging response. It’s taken me a couple of days to get out with the camera but here are some photos of the starting point.

[OH DEAR… SORRY… TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES… I CAN’T SEEM TO UPLOAD THE PHOTOS OR GET THEM TO LOAD FROM AN EXTERNAL SITE — CAN SOMEONE HELP??]

I’m willing to give it a go without digging if you think it has a reasonable chance of success after inspecting the photos! In any case, I’m sure the “after” shots a year from now will show a bit of a contrast!

Thanks for any opinions or advice!

Dave

[Test OrderKeymaster]

dforrest, sorry you are having problems posting images. You appear to have put them correctly in the post, but the way you have your hosting setup to provide hotlink protection (which stops other domains linking to your images to reduce bandwidth usage) may be the problem.

You appear to be hosting with a company called Servage and they have instructions on how to disable this here: https://www.servage.net/wiki/Hotlink_protection
Alternatively you could host the file of a service like Flickr or Pictr.com and link to it from there.

[dforrestParticipant]

Wow, thanks very much for the good advice, Thorburn! Is it possible to edit my old post — I’m logged in but don’t seem to be able to at the moment.

In the meantime, here’s another go at the photos using Pictr

My undug plot starting to the right of the stakes:

Yes I will carry off the stones!

Closeup of a crackly bit:

Closeup of a more average bit:

Advice on feasibility of just plopping a raised bed on top without disturbing the lovely hard pan is greatly appreciated.

[bluebellParticipant]

Goodness! I thought my soil was dry and stony.
I find that a good layer of compost will help to retain moisture and the moisture attracts more worms that will help to break up the soil. Although As I say my site is not as extreme as that, a layer of card cannot hurt especially if you don’t have enough compost to provide a good layer.

[RhysParticipant]

I guess my thought would be to ask whether you can set up the raised bed after heavy rain, so that there is some moisture in the pan when you put the compost on top?

[HawfinchParticipant]

Looks like quite some challenge you’ve got there, but I also think that the thick layer you are putting on top, close to 55 cm will soften the hard layer underneath. I’d definitely mulch on top of the soil even if there is a problem with slugs. Where I garden here in Switzerland slugs are also a real pest, but we get hot and dry summers and the top layer very quickly goes rock hard where it’s not covered, but stays moist and not so hard under the mulch. I find, that on balance mulch is better even if the slugs do hide under it. I look under it every so often and “take care” of the slugs I find with a pair of scissors. Slugs here will slither over almost anything, although I do find a lot less on the beds mulched with pine needles.

[charlesModerator]

Good advice here and thanks Thorburn! He is on the ball.
The photos show no evidence of pan, how do you know it is? It just looks like dry, stony clay and evidence of cracking is good, air will be entering.
Just spread compost on top, asap.

[Author]

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