Red, clay soils

Note: This essay is what I think I know about growing plants in the south. Hopefully, Lucky will chime in and correct my errors.

Early studies of nutrient cycling in moist tropical forests describes productive forests rich in nutrients in which the rates of primary production (photosynthesis) and amounts of nutrients cycled clearly exceeded those in temperate zone forests. Reviews of global-scale patterns in biomass, production and nutrients cycling reported these results as representative of tropical forests.

At the same time, tropical forest soils were described as acide, infertile clay that hardens irreversibly to “laterite” when cleared or to bleached, quartz sands low in mineral nutrients. This apparent paradox was crystalized by Whittaker in the statement “The tropical rain forest thus has a relatively rich nutrient economy perched on a nutrient-poor substrate.” P.M. Vitousek and R.L. Sanford, 1986

The forest floor in the tropics teem with termites, ants, terrestrial crabs, centipedes, snails, slugs and similar scavengers. A piece of snake feces falling from the canopy and hitting the ground is cleaned up within minutes. A leaf or twig might be gone in a day or a week.

Due to the heat and humidity, organic material quickly decays and release their nutrients. The dense webbing of feeder roots just below the surface are in a life-or-death battle to grab those nutrients before some other tree does or (unlikely) the nutrient is leached out of the reach of the roots.

The red, clay soils in the southeastern United States have many similarities with the soils in the tropics. 

How to manage gardens in red, clay soils

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Mimic what works in nature. Red, clay soils are very similar to the soils under tropical forests.

That is easier than you think because you have probably been fighting it. 

Stop being anal about eliminating "weeds", at least in the places where you haven't planted yet. That mat of Crabgrass (in the summer), Dead-nettles, Chickweed and volunteer turnips (in the cooler months) are busy keeping the nutrients in the biosphere. And since you cannot effectively bank it in the soil as humus, then that is really you only alternative.

Nutrient cycling as "an economy"

Economists look at two numbers when assessing the health of an economy: The money supply (the number of dollars in circulation) and the velocity-of-money.

Injecting funds into the economy by giving benefits to poor people has more POP! than giving it to wealthy people. Poor people don't hoard the money. They run out and spend it. Wealthy people are much more likely to park their money in bank accounts or bonds which doesn't keep the money in the high-velocity parts of the economy.

As a gardener or orchardist living in places with red, clay soils or blow-sand, you need to stop thinking of yourself as a banker but as a scheduler who makes sure that there is always a line of customers waiting to grab those nutrients before they leach away. 

ADHD and time-blindness

Russel Barkley (no relation to Brigid's dog) is a person who researches ADHD. He is the guy who linked ADHD and many of their struggles for their inability to conceptualize time and to use it to guide their actions.

A comparison between how a "normal adult" and somebody with ADHD respond to deadlines (called "Event" on the graph).

I see this in ADHD kids. They are totally binary in the sense that there is NOW and NOT-NOW. The deadline could be tomorrow or next week or twenty years from now. It is all the same to them...meaningless.

Many of the people in prison have ADHD. They grew up without consequences in the sense that a consequence tomorrow had not meaning for them, even when it was an almost certainty.

In the dry language of one criminal justice scholar "Most felons are not capable of appropriately ly discounting the probability of future consequences to their current actions."

An example of a profoundly ADHD kid

Smedley had a son named Earl.

Earl had ADHD.

In an effort to train Earl on the benefits of deferring gratification, Smedley made Earl a deal. 

"Earl, I will give you a dollar on Sunday. You can go out and spend it, but if you have that dollar I will give you two dollars on Monday."

On Monday, Earl had the dollar bill that Smedley had marked with his pen in the corner of the bill.

So, on Monday, Smedley traded that dollar bill for two one dollar bills and told Earl "If you have those two dollars tomorrow, then I will trade them for four dollars on Tuesday." 

Since Smedley had proven as good-as-his-word regarding the two dollars for one, Earl was able to produce the two bills on Tuesday and Smedley faithfully produced four...

On Wednesday Earl traded his four bills for eight.

On Thursday Earl traded his eight bills for sixteen.

On Friday Earl traded his sixteen bills for thirty-two. And still, Smedley was willing to offer a 100% "interest rate" if Earl hung onto them for another day. That is, he was willing to give Earl sixty-four dollars on Saturday if Earl still had all thirty-two dollars.

On Saturday, Earl didn't have any money. Smedley was dumbfounded. Earl didn't seem concerned.

Later, Sissy told her dad "Earl played your game until he had enough to buy seven-grams of weed."

Still confused, Smedley asked "But if he had waited one more day he would have had enough money to buy TWO baggies of weed! What is the matter with him?" 

Mr Smedley, your son has ADHD. It was binary in his head. "Not enough money to buy seven-grams was the equivalent of zero, of no-value. Once he had $30 he had enough to buy that baggie (with enough left over for a bag of skittles) and two baggies tomorrow did not compute in his head because the concept of "tomorrow" is a foreign country." 

Back to the video

The narrator describes a very simple experiment to sort ADHD from "normal".

The person performing the test turns on a light bulb and leaves it on for a predetermined amount of time. For the sake of example, let's say it is on for twenty-five seconds.

Then, after a short bit of conversation, the person giving the test hands the switch to the person being tested and tells them, "Turn on the light and turn it off when it has been on as long as I had it on."

A "normal person will likely fall within some range...again, for the sake of argument, let's say between 20 seconds and 30 seconds. An ADHD will turn it off in five-to-fifteen seconds or leave it on for minutes. 

IQ or ADHD

Granted, there will be a huge amount of overlap. A person with ADHD cannot sit through an IQ test so we really cannot measure their "intelligence".

But I propose that time-blindness has such grave consequences that there would be value, and profit, in finding ways to train-the-brain to compensate for that inability. 

First harvests, gardening fail and simple garden tools

First Harvests

The first broccoli florets, harvested May 29, 2026!

 

First potato harvest of 2026. Uncovered while tilling. Still sound!

 

Gardening fail

I had cucumber transplants die!

I had grown them in water-bottles that I had cut the tops off of. Since the bottles are wasp-waisted, I rolled up strips of newspaper to hold the soil, thinking it would be easier to remove the root-ball from the plastic container.

A cucumber plant still in its paper sleeve

That part worked like a charm

What I did not realize was that the paper was almost impenetrable to the cucumber roots. The baby plants were not able to access the moisture in the soil around them because I had planted them paper-sleeve and all.

Transplant with the paper sleeve unrolled showing roots

I replanted with the same batch of plants but unrolled the paper sleeve from the root-ball. That took about 4 seconds and there roots were well enough developed to hold the soil together.

Then I gave the plants a large drink of water to settle the soil and melt the tiny clods into the roots that had been exposed when I unrolled the sleeve.

Simple tools

You can see water ponding where I stepped

The simplest and cheapest tool is to change your gardening practices.

Walking across garden soil compacts it. That limits water being able to soak in. It also hampers root growth thereby limiting the plants' access to nutrients and moisture.

The picture shown above isn't quite what you think it is. My practice is to place my feet in the same place every time I walk up-or-down a garden path. The footsteps you see are the result of ten or fifteen round-trips up that path. What I want you to see is the area in the path where the water IS NOT ponding.

No flag stones. No boards (which can shelter insect pests). No gravel. Just a simple change in practice.

Actual tools

Repurposed items are inexpensive because you didn't have to drive somewhere to buy it. They are fast because you didn't have to wait for deliver.

 

This might LOOK like a common leaf rake. But it is not. It is a Border Collie!

This is the rake that I use to herd my ducks into their enclosure to keep them safe at night.

Ducks are terrified by raptors like hawks. It is in their DNA.

When I raise this rake and rotate the handle +/-30 degrees, the visual effect (to the ducks) are the beating of wings.

If I want the ducks to go to the left, I raise the rake in my right hand and give it a wiggle.

If I want them to go right, I shift the rake over to my left hand, raise it up and give it a wiggle.

I can move that "hawk" 15' between the length of the handle and the span of my arms. No need to run or hurry. I don't need to move my body. 

If the ducks are moving in the direction I want them to go, I lower the rake.

And guess where those ducks want to be when they start seeing "hawks" flying over-head? You guessed it. They want to be in their safe-space.

Information is a tool

This is a simple, plastic cereal bowl that was purchased at a garage sale

Two of these go into a bucket for the ducks to eat. This bowl lives in the open bag of duck food.

Do you see to dashed line on this jug? That is how much water I add to the duck feet to make a mash that they don't waste. The jug is a tool.

This jug lives on the stack of kindling in the breeze-way.

This is a simple 3-by-5 inch index card that I laminated with packing tape. This card is a tool...a device that helps me work more quickly and/or perform higher-quality work.

 

Rather than recalculate the dilution rate every time I need to do it, I wrote it down. This card lives in the open bag of urea fertilizer. I even did it in metric so I don't have to change the mode on Mrs ERJ's kitchen scale (it defaults to metric).

 

Peanut butter, toys for children, longevity of various dog breeds

 

Counties that grow peanuts on the left, drought map on right

I believe that D1 is the equivalent of Mean Soil Moisture - 1.0 Standard Deviation. D2 is MSM - 2.0 Standard Deviations and so on.

Source of drought picture.

Source of peanut production by county (Note: there is one county in Texas that produces a lot of peanuts that I trimmed off to make the two maps match.

Conclusion: This might be a good time to buy peanut butter.

Toys for children

Quicksilver had her 4th birthday this past week. 

Kids are very quick to identify playground equipment because it is almost always combinations of vivid red, vivid yellow or vivid blue.

While walking in town (Eaton Rapids) to get to the library, she saw some toys. She liked the blue one best.

Photo take with the driver's permission

I think the vehicle owner was a U-of-M fan. It had yellow seat/shoulder belts. Just because you have money doesn't mean you have good taste.

Gardening report from Southern Belle

The tomatoes and peppers were planted at the widow's house. 

The "garden" consisted of two raised beds, 4' long by 2' wide. They were tucked underneath the eves on the west side of the garage...so half-day of afternoon sun. The beds were 8" deep trays held up with 4-by-4 legs.

The customer was happy.

Thanks for all of the comments in the previous post

It feels odd to not have Zeus or some other dog around.

I was not aware of how much attention I paid to him. It was just part of the normal fabric of life.

For example, our main security camera (which we think of as a window where the builder didn't put one) looks down the length of our driveway from the corner of the garage. That feed captures Zeus's kennel. EVERY time I look at that feed "window" I monitor Zeus's body language.

We have owned single or multiple dogs continuously since 1988.

The data for life-expectancy by dog breed is squishy. There is not a lot of it and it is known to have self-selection biases, i.e. owners of posh purebreds are more likely to register data than owners of mutts.

We will probably get another dog but it will be on our terms; our  timing, the size that will work for us, breed and so on. 

On average:

• Smaller dogs live longer than larger dogs
• Dogs with longer muzzles live longer than dogs with pushed in muzzles
• Crossbred dogs live longer than purebred dogs.

Some breeds defy expectations. Border Collies, Australian Shepherds and Jake Russel Terriers are over-achievers for longevity. I am clueless regarding the personality of a Jack Russel x Border Collie cross. They are both very intense dogs with the Jack Russel being ADHD and the Border Collie OCD. It could go either way, best of both or worst of both.

 

Seedling trays

Japanese Water Iris

The seed package said they would sprout in seven-to-fourteen days. I planted 100 seeds. The first one sprouted on Day 15. I am up to five of the hundred showing green.

 

Wibb Watermelon. 2021 seeds. 6-of-9 planted germinated so far

I already have a marketing plan for the melons. I will sell them to McDonalds to use in their iconic McWibb sandwiches.

Tasteless jokes

The best thing about being a grave digger is that it is one of the very few professions where you start out right at the top.

 

Zeus update

Zeus's deterioration accelerated. He was crashing. Kubota was a rock-star. He used some connections and pulled in a few favors to get Zeus into the vet (small towns have advantages), but it was to no avail. Zeus slipped his mortal coil at 9:14 A.M. local time.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven

A time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up

 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance...    -Ecclesiastes 3, KJV

 

One hour, 15 minutes from marking out the corners of the grave in the sod to sprinkling zinnia seeds over the newly filled grave.

Zeus is planted between a Bur Oak and a Persimmon tree in our yard. He is looking west. My apologies for the crappy pictures. I was distracted.

God-speed, Zeus. Rest in Peace.

If you can spare a prayer for Kubota, I will appreciate it. He was holding his dog for the last 20 minutes telling Zeus "I'm sorry". Kubota could not hear me telling him that he had no reason to be sorry, that he (Kubota) had not failed him. That Zeus didn't blame him. That Zeus was happy that Kubota was there in his moments of greatest need. 

Lives end. Life goes on...

Zeus update

Zeus is fading fast. There is more going on than the hot-spots. My kids have been alerted so they can swing by the house and say "Good-bye". Zeus was Kubota's dog and he is taking the news hard.

There are a lot of moving pieces. One of the big ones is how to bring him back home without freaking out Quicksilver. The time windows when the vet is open and we are not watching her are very short slivers of time.

Quicksilver knows about death. She has seen dead chickens and her papa, Handsome Hombre "took care of" the raccoons responsible for the dead chickens. We walk country roads and she is keenly aware of the dead birds, rabbits possum, raccoons and deer that we encounter.

I don't think she is ready to process a family member dying. More honestly, I don't have the energy right now to help her process that.

Southern Belle update

Southern Belle took the vegetable seedlings to her Wednesday church-group meeting. One of the other women there was recently widowed. Her deceased husband was the gardener in the family. The widow longingly looked at the seedlings and said "I wish I could take some but planting a garden is beyond what I can do."

Southern Belle stepped up. "I can plant your garden" she said.

I looked at the widow's address on Google. Her entire back yard is 1100 square-feet and the "garden" is a narrow strip of bare dirt next to the concrete patio.

The irony is that I am planting SB's garden and she is going to plant the widow's garden. You know, I really don't have an objection to that. My goal is to have her family be proficient at growing food. If it takes a grieving widow to prime-the-pump, it is just more evidence of God's mysterious ways.

Fishing report

I sat in a chair on the beach while Shotgun fished. He had two bites but landed neither one of them.

Biological Calendar

The Black Locust, iris and first white clover are in bloom. Alas, so is the Orchardgrass.

The peonies are just opening up and our first head of broccoli is ready to harvest. If you look very closely at the ends of the new shoots on the pecan trees you can see the tiny shapes the will become clusters of pecans while the catkins are strewn like confetti along the length of the twigs.

The horseradish is done blooming and the raspberries are near the end of their blooming. Our last lilac, Betsy Ross is near the end of its show.

The bluegills are newly on their beds. I could smell them as I sat on the beach. I can also smell the male Honey Locust flowers.

The geese have goslings in tow. Swallows are abundant. 

The grass needs mowing and the garden needs weeding. 

Stuff I planted yesterday:

Another 60 feet of sweet corn in Handsome Hombre's corn patch.

Two cantaloupe plants. Interplanted with turnip seeds for greens.

Two Atlantis cantaloupe seedlings.

A row of broccoli on the left and newly planted sweet peppers on the right.

Eleven sweet pepper plants in Southern Belle's garden.

Twenty marigold plants and five small rhubarb seedlings. 

Adeline of Bohodukhiv plants a garden

Adeline is the youngest sister of Athanasius who posts on Youtube. She studied in Germany and then moved back to the family compound. She teaches German language "remotely" and posts cooking and family-life videos on Youtube.

She recently moved out of the family compound. It may have been difficult to work remotely due to ambient noise, power outages and general chaos.

The first order-of-business after moving was to put in a garden. Several things struck me as notable in this video:

• Adeline and her helper are very industrious. They keep working and working and working.
• The only power-tool I saw them use was a cordless drill. Everything else was done with hand-tools. I saw them use a mobile-home anchor as an auger to dig holes for trellis posts, for instance.
• Other than seeds, the only "purchased/manufactured" materials I saw them use was netting for the cucumbers to climb on.
• Their soil was very easy to work. It is "Chemozem" or "Black soil". The garden appeared to have been used in 2025 since the only weeds were common annuals like Wild Lettuce and Lambsquarters.

Other observations that are making me think

While videos like this can be inspirational to new gardeners, it comes with some caveats.

If a person were to attempt to exactly replicate her garden in the US, for instance, he would likely have problems. Most specifically, the planting density that she uses.

Things like planting density depend on "the system". Context matters.

• Varieties planted
• Training 
• Soil fertility
• Dryland or irrigated 
• Weed control plan
• Disease pressure 

My father, for example, planted potatoes in hills that were planted in a 36" grid in both directions. He cultivated (kept the weeds under control) with a rototiller with a 24" width. First he would till east-west and then he would follow with a north-south tilling. He did not have the means to water the garden during dry-spells nor did he use significant amounts of fertilizer.  

All of those pieces fit together. Effective cultivation conserved water and the low density meant that the individual potato plants were not competing with each other for the limited moisture and fertility. While his harvest per unit-area was low, he cultivated enough area to have plenty of potatoes.

I, on the other hand, plant at about three times that density. But I fertilize and I use impulse sprinklers to water the garden through dry spells. You cannot mix-and-match details from the two systems although sometimes you might get lucky with rain and fertile soils.

Some examples from the video:

She is planting a boat-load of carrot seeds per inch. Perhaps they will suppress weeds?

 

This row-spacing commits them to hand cultivating

In this image she is planting tomato plants.

By midwestern standards, this is a very high planting density.

From a systems standpoint, it could work with a "determinate" tomato variety like Roma trained to a single shoot per plant and modest amounts of fertility. A dry summer climate is also a part of the system...high plant densities and wet weather foster disease.

That is one reason for finding a local gardening mentor. YOUR local conditions and the best methods might be very different than what a glamorous influencer does.