Did amending my clay soil to plant pumpkins work? 

volunteers are the best. No effort required 😊

Good job on the soil transformation

It’s interesting that volunteers start growing earlier then we start putting our plants out. Those volunteers are healthy looking

Hey Jon, that soil is looking mighty good! And I love volunteers…how they randomly pop up. We get pumpkins and sunflowers that way. Looking forward to your updates…

That's beautiful soil! It doesn't look like clay at all - just enough to hold together. Nice and crumbly! I've been working on my topsoil for years and that's exactly what I'm trying for. It'll get there. The worms do the work. Small changes over time make for big changes. I use the pelletized wood bedding that I use for my brooders, composted chicken manure, and any organic thing I can find. Volunteer tomatoes are amazing! They tend to be a bit more adapted to your area. Land Raced Mystery tomatoes! I mix plants up. Companion planting, for the most part, is just confusing pests and diseases by breaking up the monocropping into smaller/individual areas so it's harder for pests and diseases to wipe out your crop. If the pests can't find your plants, they can't eat them! I can't think of a reason why squash of any sort and tomatoes can't be grown together. The squash would shade the soil and possibly the tomato plants, but the tomatoes try to vine up, instead of out. Put a couple of stakes, or some Florida twining for the tomatoes and you should be fine. Just step carefully through the vines .... Great video and very encouraging! Thank you!

Hey everybody, I really was happy with how this came out. It seems like I've kind of tweaked it over the last two years, so I hope this does as good as it did last year. Let me know what you think. Thanks for watching.

I agree; have them raised up instead of down in a trench would be better next year. But that soil looks amazing

We have clay soil and wet summers so squashes etc. need to be raised to avoid rotting. Hills get washed away so we plant in plastic pots with the bottom cut off and filled with compost, and slightly dug into the soil. The roots go down into the soil but the stem and roots stay above the ground level and stay drier. This might solve your problem with the plants that are below the ground level.