SURFACE SINKHOLES AND GEORGIA RED-CLAY
Mom and Dad allowed me to plant a small vegetable garden when I was about age 10. This small, backyard plot of green peppers and tomatoes was a lot of work and produced almost nothing for the trouble, but I got some exercise, some experience in taking responsibility, and I read a few kid's books on basic gardening. What I remember most was getting up before 7am during summer vacation to do the watering. If I had known about the adult world of watering restrictions during droughts, before I turned the first spade of dirt over, I probably would have chosen a different summer project.
Forty-seven years later I am again experiencing the visceral, primordial, earthy desire to produce my own food. I tried hunting in my 20's and 30's, and though I enjoyed the time in the forest watching Bambi from a tree stand, when, after 8 years of trying, I finally killed her, I never tried again. I like meat, but I buy it at Walmart. However, I think I can remove a green bean from it's plant with little remorse.
So, Lois and I bought an acre with a small manufactured home in northeast Georgia and I got to work improving the soil. The county extension web site made it clear that the Georgia, red-clay, common to our new home was too acidic and lacked organic material. No surprise there – even I knew good farming soil should be black – that's what I thought.
The front third of the single acre property is cleared, with a weedy lawn, several dogwoods in the front, the house, and then a small backyard. The double lot slopes from the dirt road, under the house, and then the back two-thirds of the double lot is wooded so thick you can't walk through it in the summer. Not brambles and vines, but thick with the offspring of large oaks, beech, and sweet gum thickly mixed with some kind of long-needle pine.
I hacked my way through this wall of biomass, thinking that perhaps the Georgia red-clay had better nutrient qualities than the county extention service was aware of. Our lot is on a slope that starts somewhere across the road, and ends at our back property line which is in the center of a creek bed that feeds into Gumlog Creek. Gumlog Creek is flooded by the damming of the Savannah River at Hartwell Georgia, creating Lake Hartwell.
Our property would be worth a lot of money if, as the original land speculators concluded, the flooding of this Army Corps of Engineer's dam project had traveled up the usually dry creek bed at the back of our property. Well, their hydrolic miscalculation was our gain. The cost of our rural, wooded acre with small manufactured home is about the same as the cost of the land under my brother's driveway in Massachusetts.
Well, I fought my way through the lush vegitation to actually see the back line of our property in the middle of this creek bed. And, it was pretty cool when I got there. The vegitation opened up and the Georgia red-clay gave way to a beautiful, sandy, floor to this creek bed draw that was only about 100 yards from the lake. I immediately bought an electric chain saw with the idea that I would turn this dense, impenetrable two-thirds of our property into a paradise. Cut down all the baby trees and make paths that wander through the dozen or two mature trees existing in the space down to the beautiful sandy creek bed that will have a rushing stream in the spring.
Of course, I neglected to consider how and where I would haul these (not so little now) baby trees. And, Oh, there are actually greenbriar vines entangled in each of these baby trees. I really like the dense, thick, wild feel of our back property.
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The adventure to the back line of the property revealed a couple of other interesting facts. Why, in the middle of all this Georgia red-clay, was there so much sand in the creek bed? I figured out the answer to this question while mowing the front lawn one day.
We moved in, in August. Buy November, I decided I was not going to spend the time and money mowing the lawn and managing the weeds. We lived in the county – outside the city regulations – the dog could run around off the leash and I didn't have to mow the lawn. In fact, when we moved in, our lawn was the only one in the sparcely inhabited neighborhood that was maintained and cut. Having some biological knowledge, I thought – MEADOW! I got on-line and ordered local wildflower seeds. Bought some Round-up, killed the weeds, and spread the natural, ecologically sensative mix over my dead lawn.
Well, the early results say that the idea might actually work. But, the extra attention I had to apply to get the job done, revealed another fun geologic fact. Remember the sand in the creek bed? Well, where do you suppose it came from? Yes, the Georgia red-clay on our sloping double lot is infiltrated with sand deposits. Over the years the water leaching down the slope has eroded these deposits that now sit, so pretty, in the creek bed.
So I'm sowing the local wildflower seeds on the front lawn and I notice depressions and then an actual hole. The holes about the size of a baseball and a flashlight reveals that the ground underneath is open about the size of a bathtub. This is when I notice the depressions in the lawn above the bathtubs. We've got ….................sinkholes. Check the life insurance and call the kids.
Well, not to worry. There's only a couple and the neighbors say you wait for them to fall in and then get a load of fill. Better idea. The cost of a fruit tree with a big root ball, plus the cost of a half dozen bags of topsoil from Home Depot, is way less than the cost of a dump truck load of fill.
So, no landscaping, just the wilderness luck of the draw. Get a sink-hole, plant a tree. I don't care what it looks like and my wild meadow lawn will eventually be so beautiful that no one will notice the lack of symmetry in the trees.
Also, 6 months after putting lime down to increase the soil Ph and adding a little black topsoil, the soil is great. Every time I plant something, I dig up enough earthworms to go fishing and there's all kinds of insects imbedded in the soil too.
Damn, I better by some termite spray and get under the house.
ENJOY LIFE WITH REASON, JACK
