Re-Digging My New Daffodil Beds
Ever serious daffodil grower knows that if the beds are not prepared properly, the "Show" daffodils' bloom quality will decline sharply after the first year. I have no intention of letting my daffodils decline into naturalized varieties.
The big tractor didn't work. Regardless of the reportedly depth the chisel plow can achieve, as soon as I pushed my first bulb planter into the new garden, I knew I had problems. Daffodil beds have to be turned over deep, and the ingredients of the daffodil "cocktail" has to be mixed deep. The bulb planter hit rock-hard clay less then 8 inches down from the top of the bed. The chisel plow had not turned the soil down to 24 inches, and had not mixed the sand/topsoil and other ingredients into the red clay soil. My daffodil bed preparation was, as a minimum, a failure.
Back to the Start.
I had to start over with the digging. The thought of digging a 50 foot by 150 foot area at least 18 inches and best at 24 inches deep was more that I could fathom. A shovel would never do, and the chisel plow had proven ineffective. So, it was back to the original plan, the back-hoe.
The small back-hoe and me, with Fran taking the picture after I had finished the digging.
Back-hoe Operation
The sand and "leaf-gro" had been added to the top of the new bed, but was not mixed deep. So instead of planting bulbs, I called the local tool rental center and ordered a small back-hoe to be delivered to my home. The back-hoe was delivered at about 2:30pm on Saturday, and I spent the remainder of the day, until it got dark, and six hours Sunday morning digging with the back-hoe down to a depth of 18-24 inches.
The garden looked like a disaster area, or a construction job site when the foundation footings are being dug. I had holes deep enough to bury the back-hoe in some locations, and mounds of dirt that looked like the Rocky Mountains in others. I'm sorry that I didn't take time to take pictures, but I was so intent on getting the work done, that I could only concentrate on the job completion. At about this point I had a sick feeling in my stomach that I was never going to be able to make a garden out of this mess. But I gave it the old Mid-Western try. It took a lot of maneuvering with the bucket attachment to level things back to an acceptable growing area.
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