When we purchased the land on which the house and garden now sit nearly two years ago, it was covered with scraggly pine trees. I found a penny dated 1962 on the ground, and based on what the neighbors tell me, the land was last in a functional pasture sometime in the 1960s. In the intervening decades, pine trees and sweet gums took over the pasture and returned it to forest.
Clearing all those trees required a nice man with a bulldozer. He knocked over the trees, pushed them into a pile, and burned them for us. I am sure that burning giant piles of trees was not the most environmentally friendly method of disposal, but we had 2 acres of trees and roots to get rid of. We briefly considered chipping them into mulch, but the cost was prohibitive and we would still have had more mulch than we could ever use. Eventually it would have rotted, but in the interim it would have provided the perfect habitat for snakes and fire ants.
The nice man with the bulldozer brought in some topsoil to fill in a hole created when we had to borrow some soil to move up nearer the house to fill in a low spot. After he brought in the soil, he spread it where I asked, and then rode back and forth over the spot to make sure it was smooth, packing it down into something like concrete. I describe the process in more detail in Beginnings.
The landscaper did till the soil in my garden spot for me, but even after the tillage a hard layer of soil remained. Although I dug the garden at my old house with a mattock and a spading fork, I needed something that would complete the job more quickly and with less effort.
I purchased a broadfork last week, from Johnny’s Seeds. (I am not receiving any compensation for this post; I thought linking to their website might explain it better than I can).
The blades are about 10 inches long. My 12-year-old thought the work looked fun, and I let her help.
She pressed the broadfork into the soil and then stood on it. It entered the soil, but to put it into the full depth I had to stand on the broadfork and rock it back and forth. Using the broadfork sort of reminds me of standing on a pogo-stick, although I don’t jump up and down but instead wiggle and rock it around.
The blades of the broadfork break through the hardpan, and then I pull it back towards the ground. I want to turn in this cover crop and do some more tillage of this soil, so I laid it back onto the ground.
This loosens the soil about eight inches deep, and it is now easy to rake and to smooth the soil. When I felt particularly energetic, I raked aside this now-fluffy soil and repeated the process of breaking up the soil and turning it over again.
To till the soil this deeply with any other method, I would have had to use a pickaxe. My 12-year-old definitely could not have helped with that project. I could have hired someone to till the soil, but that would have destroyed the beds I have created. The tractor tires would have compacted much of the soil again. I would also have had to wait until the soil was dry enough for a tractor or a tiller, and I don’t know when that might happen.
I can take out the broadfork at almost any time to work the soil. After I do the initial tillage of the soil, I won’t turn it over again. Instead I will go through the beds, drive the broadfork into the soil, rock it back and forth a few inches, and move onto the next spot.
I used it in the lawn and the flowerbeds; those areas have also been victim to a bulldozer as well as the receptacle for piles of bricks and construction materials. Water stands during rains in my flowerbeds, and I hope that the aeration with the broadfork will help. I did not turn over the soil in my established beds or in my lawn, of course, I just rocked the blades back and forth to loosen and to aerate it.
For more on my work to transform my yard from a mud slick into a garden, visit Oh, this soil. The best thing about using the broadfork is that there is nothing to break, no noise, and I can forgo any other workout on the day I use it. And, if only she weighed a bit more, my 12-year-old could do the work. It is satisfying and not overly difficult work.