Smartie's Bar & Grill #72

It depends.... an old Brittish greenhouse mix is one part compost.... one part manure.... one part garden soil. With heavy clay I would go 50 50 dirt and manure. Nothing softens clay better than manure. But beware of persistent herbicides.

 

Yeah but they're sticky, too. Makes em undesirable weapons. Get that stuff on your hands once, it's likely you wont pick up another one.

 

3-4 inches for a starter. Compost needs to be refreshed every year, so leave room to the sides of the plants. Don't forget the Epsom Salt, just a dash in the plant hole.

 

Gypsum does a good job breaking up clay, along with perlite for aeration.

 

The dirt along the back wall is different from the front. It's about 5ft. of fill. There's not a lot of organic matter, but it breaks up easily. It drains quickly. I dug that trench 3 inches wide, 10 inches deep and 10ft. long. I wanted to keep it soaked so the dirt wouldn't keep falling in, but I couldn't get it to fill up with water. It drained too fast.

 

Life happens and I hope for the best. another poster I haven’t seen in a while is frank apisa.

 

Ya but nuthin beats manure.

 

Eggs Beat manure every day of the week.
I mean,since when is manure more important than
Mayonnaise.

 

Good morning earthlings. 3 day weekend with no obligations on the horizon. Yippee!

 

My sister always had horses and I could have all of the free manure I wanted. I found that it did help break up clay soil but gave me lots of weeds with little nutrients added.
We started raising meat rabbits and found rabbit manure to be black gold, in fact the only thing better is bat guano. My wife was selling rabbit poop on eBay (pot growers). A large flat rate box for $20 plus shipping. Once I built her greenhouses we used most of it ourselves and gardening success really took off. The days of planting and waiting for a deficiency to appear, identify it, correct it, and wait for results pretty much ended. That never seems to work anyway. By the time you see something wrong, the plant is suffering and even if corrected, never seems to fully recover. Stunted growth or lower production always seems to be result.

Rabbit poop....is like prenatal vitamins for your garden.

 

If you need water retention, so it doesn't dry out so fast, add peat moss. Saturate it first with warmish water, let it sit over night to absorb water, then till it in as deep as you can, then water the whole mess. Next day, scrape aside the top couple of inches, and grasp some of the mixture, see if you can clump it firmly. If it kind sticks together, you're good. If it falls apart, add more to the whole thing. The only issue is if it gets dried out, like completely, it will take a while to rehydrate. Or, you can buy soil conditioners that will do pretty much the same thing. The last alternative is to dig a koi pond in the back yard, and use that dirt in the front strip where you need it, and save the rest in a old garbage can for future projects.

Then, for entertainment purposes, go to the bait store, buy a pint of red wrigglers (must use wrigglers) and dump them into the soil. Add egg shells, shredded leaves, veggie scraps. Vermicomposting is a wonderful way to condition soil, and you get the castings to boot, for fertilizer. Your plants will love you. And, if you listen carefully on a warm summer's night, the worms will sing a capella, old Italian love songs.

 

Can't argue against rabbit manure.... great for tomatoes.

 

A little dishwashing liquid will help the peat moss absorb water.

 

With all due respect, everyday DW liquid is pure synthetic chemicals, some with anti-bacterials, best used on dishes, if you absolutely must. There are a couple that are plant based, but expensive for that application.

 

It's a wetting agent. It works.

 

"...till it in as deep as you can..."

Umm...

Retired guy, here. I can "till" it in on the tarp.



Five minutes to dig, twenty-five minutes to fill.

4:01pm EST:



4:05pm EST:



4:08pm EST:



4:21pm EST (No, I didn't cheat by pounding the yardstick into the ground. That dirt washed in.):

 

You gotta poke at us with that retired bit, eh? If you need some more projects to keep yerself entertained, let me know, I have family on that side of the world...

It still needs to set, for hydration. Like, check tomorrow, see if the additional water has absorbed. This is fun, watching recommendations come alive on the other side of the country. Thanks for the pictures!

 

"As deep as I can" doesn't mean much. "As deep as I feel like" makes more sense, to me.

The internet says to mix in compost two feet deep. I plan to do it in stages. I'll dig down about one foot and make a pile with that. Then, the second foot will be a second pile. I'll do that because the dirt turns to a lot of sand after about a foot down.

Maybe mix peat moss with the sandy soil and compost into the top foot?

"It still needs to set, for hydration. Like, check tomorrow, see if the additional water has absorbed."

Does this mean that I filled in the hole too soon?

 

Peat will change your soil pH. Good for some stuff but not good for everything. Of course it depends on your base soil.

 

Nah, just scrape some of the top layers away, and grab a handful about a foot down. Do the clench test, see if it holds.

 

Depends how much you use. Of course, a good dose of lime can help offset that.

 

And here are the raised beds we are constructing, and where the 8x8' greenhouse will be.

 

I hope that greenhouse will be large enough for you. The setup looks good.

 

Heh, heh.

I'm going to have to change my plans for the new flower bed in back.

The neighbor behind me called to let me know that I flooded his back yard with my drainage experiment.

Doing xeriscape research...