Gardening Life
Sep. 5th, 2006 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsGods, our soil is crap.
We had hit a few Labor Day sales to fill out the girls' back-to-school wardrobes. Thank the Goddess they're not brand-conscious yet and could care less about who makes their denim. The lines were utterly insane, as too many stores use their sales this day to clear out their summer inventory and prepare of Halloween and the Christmas season. Waiting for the fitting room so Yamaraashi-chan could try on a few pairs of jeans was nuts.
On the way home we stopped by the garden store and picked up a whole bunch of perennials in the hopes that they would survive the winter, especially since they were unbelievably cheap ($5 for a half-pallet of mixed herbs) and we've had good luck with buys like that.
Omaha bought a companion tree to shield the rhododendron. While I had worked the apples, she cleaned and leveled the area in front of our house, then mixed 20 gallons of compost with our soil and spread it. Then she called for my help to plant the tree, which required a deep hole in the front yard in front of the rhody. Our soil is just compacted sand and awful, and my arms ached by the time I had a one-foot-deep hole.
The girls were great, though, tending to all the plants, watering them carefully. Kouryou-chan was more gentle than she needed to be, holding the hose in such a way that the plants "would feel like it was raining." Yamaraashi-chan just took my advice and let the hose pour into the pallet, and we were done in short order.
Now, I have to mix more compost and sand to make a base for the herbs in the back yard, and then nurse them through the winter. Fortunately, parsley, sage, and even basil are very hardy plants after all. And rosemary's damn near unkillable.
We had hit a few Labor Day sales to fill out the girls' back-to-school wardrobes. Thank the Goddess they're not brand-conscious yet and could care less about who makes their denim. The lines were utterly insane, as too many stores use their sales this day to clear out their summer inventory and prepare of Halloween and the Christmas season. Waiting for the fitting room so Yamaraashi-chan could try on a few pairs of jeans was nuts.
On the way home we stopped by the garden store and picked up a whole bunch of perennials in the hopes that they would survive the winter, especially since they were unbelievably cheap ($5 for a half-pallet of mixed herbs) and we've had good luck with buys like that.
Omaha bought a companion tree to shield the rhododendron. While I had worked the apples, she cleaned and leveled the area in front of our house, then mixed 20 gallons of compost with our soil and spread it. Then she called for my help to plant the tree, which required a deep hole in the front yard in front of the rhody. Our soil is just compacted sand and awful, and my arms ached by the time I had a one-foot-deep hole.
The girls were great, though, tending to all the plants, watering them carefully. Kouryou-chan was more gentle than she needed to be, holding the hose in such a way that the plants "would feel like it was raining." Yamaraashi-chan just took my advice and let the hose pour into the pallet, and we were done in short order.
Now, I have to mix more compost and sand to make a base for the herbs in the back yard, and then nurse them through the winter. Fortunately, parsley, sage, and even basil are very hardy plants after all. And rosemary's damn near unkillable.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-06 04:17 am (UTC)This is one of the many reasons all my food gardening is being in raised beds. That, and they're cool. ^_^
no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 02:40 am (UTC)We have sod on fill.
You can't rototil our yard. Not possible. There's too much … crap per cubic inch of our "soil". And, really, we only have about 1/2 inch of soil.
Below that is clay mixed with brick, chunks of asphalt, and rocks of various sizes. Most of it is rocks, really, usually fist-sized. But, while digging holes for shrubs over the years, we have pulled out what looks like demolition waste. Why, this summer, 2 beer bottles came out of the yard.
You'd think our house was built on a landfill.
But you'd be wrong: the developers just raided a landfill to get what they needed to replace all of the topsoil they stripped of the farm that they were "developing."
no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-06 04:32 am (UTC)I would suggest a good barky soil additive along with vermiculite and peat moss. DKNY and Sunset both have good guidebooks on how to improve whatever type of soil you have.
One trick my Gram used was to take the soiled straw from the horse barn and mix that in with her garden in E. WA. The straw gave bulk to the soil and it came with fertilizer!
Of course if it really is clay you want the sand to help loosen it up.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-06 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-06 03:40 pm (UTC)heh. And it's so *good* on chicken or pork.