On 3/6/2015 8:26 PM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote:
On 3/4/2015 5:24 PM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote:
[snipped again]
Was going to start amending the last raised bed today, got another
!@#$% cold front moving in and it might freeze by the end of the
week. Drat! my pear tree is currently in full bloom, might mean
another year with no pears. Have to go to town and buy some dirt.
Never thought I would be buying dirt but we live on six inches of
river sand atop five feet of Houston gumbo clay so we have to amend
everything we plant.

We *finally* have some rain forecast for the next few days after not
having rain to speak of since just before Christmas. I hope the
forecasters have it right this time. It annoys me how the
forecasters think that 'hot and dry' is a good forecast and rain is
a bad one - even when most of the country's experiencing extra-dry
conditions and large parts are in drought! The soil here is rich - but
only 4" deep. Below that it's a hard
clay pan that takes a crowbar to break up (I know from when I
mistakenly planted trees in the ground). My using raised beds isn't
so much because there's no soil, rather because there's not enough
of it. (I used to wonder why I'd always get blossom end rot on my
tomatoes, despite regular watering before I put the raised beds in.)
Sounds just like our "dirt" here but nothing rich about it as the
builders put sand on top of the hard clay pan. I wondered why my first
blueberry plants weren't doing well. Turned out they were drowning in
their pot holes.

I made my own 'dirt' originally, with the first raised bed (peat and
my own compost mixed with pumice sand and vermiculite). However that
got very expensive and it was at a time that my back got worse so
that now I no longer have significant amounts of compost coming on.
These days I buy 'compost' when it's cheap. In early spring the big
chains usually compete with each other and I can get four 40l bags
of it for under $20. It's largely pine bark from our forestry
industry and hardly composted at all so isn't high-grade. However I
try to leave it in the (perforated) bags in contact with the soil in
a cool and shady part of the section for a year before I use it.
Then it's a much better product, black. rich and crawling with
critters.
We used the "Square Foot Gardening" soil mix, one third rich compost,
one third peat moss, and one third vermiculite. Lots of fun putting
five-gallon buckets of each on a ten by ten foot tarp and then tossing
the stuff around. We both developed nice biceps doing that. The high
dollar stuff here is the vermiculite followed closely by the peat
moss.

I did a similar thing. Yes, the vermiculite is also the most expensive part
here too, hence swapping it out for pumice sand (on the advice of a
commercial grower) after the first bed. The peat moss is also hugely
expensive - at least relative to my income (welfare, an Invalid's Benefit)
so I couldn't continue using that method.

With the last couple of rasied beds I used soil that had been removed from
ground at my neighbours place when he had a large four-car garage built.
It's very poor soil though, a high clay content with a lot of gravel too. I
amend it in spring with the cheap composted pine bark I mentioned earlier,
further composted and mixed with the small amount of composted household
waste that I still produce.

My raised beds are only 4" high and I've been thinking about adding another
4" board to them one by one, as I can afford it. I wish that I'd coated the
existing (lower) boards with pitch or asphalt now though, I'm not sure how
long they'll last. Originally I had weedmatting bottoms on the beds as most
of the lawn here is a very invasive strain of grass, kikuyu. It can run
several metres undergound before coming up again and can establish from an
inch of 'runner' left in soil. However for the second season I removed the
bottoms as they were a very effective moisture barrier which stopped the
plants from tapping into moisture below.

(In my youth I worked for a year as a contract groundsman and gardener for
absentee landownwers on Norfolk Island. Kikuyu grows even more vigourously
and invasively there than it does here. There we'd use and old wire-woven
double bed base as a giant sieve and process all the soil in flower borders
and gardens though that to remove Kikuyu, then not only raise them 4" but
put another 4 to 6" of boards underground surrounding them to stop
subterranean runners from getting in. These days you'd buy materials and
make a purpose-built sieve but back then we often re-purposed things.)

Lots of beef lots here in Texas and the droppings get composted
with grass cuttings, hay, and whatever dry stuff is available. We buy
the "Black Cow" brand as it seems to have more good stuff in it. This
year we bought some earthworms to put in the beds, hoping they will
help. When we gardened in another state we lived on an ancient sand
dune that had a rich loam topping about three feet deep, toss a seed
in the ground and jump back. I miss that but it is a challenge to see
your garden produce food from that which was nothing but bags of
"stuff."


The cattle manure based compost sounds like it would be better than the pine
waste compost that's commercially available here.

I also add used (cheap) potting mix - which I tend to have lots of
due to my growing dwarf trees in containers and having to pot them
up regularly and my constant experiments with cuttings put into pot
mix, only a small fraction of which have taken this year.

I wish I had the room to do that again. Very small property with a big
house on it, lots of concrete sidewalks,driveways, etc. We do have a
composter barrel and it takes a good bit of time to make a decent
compost as we're not allowed to have heaps. Tut, tut, neighbors might
not like the earthy smell of a compost heap. Nothing here gets wasted,
kitchen scraps, grass clippings, whatever comes our way gets composted
or dug into a virgin bed for later use.

I grow my dwarf trees in ~100l tubs on my deck and by the side of my
driveway. It's easier to give them good soil and to control their watering
that way without 'wasting' water. Every three years or so in winter I remove
them from the pots and prune the roots back. I then tease as much of the old
soil as I can from the roots with my fingers and re-pot them, teasing the
new soil back between the roots and spreading them evenly. They get about
60% new soil each time. If they're citrus, I also take the opportunity to
prune the top - to shape the tree and also so the reduced root area doesn't
struggle too much to support the foliage. After six months they're growing
like crazy again.

Working with fruit trees is often a calming affect on me. I have several
sizes of "limb spreaders." Found a place online that had them and they
last longer than my old scrap wood ones. The pear tree in front of the
house will get it's first open pruning this fall. Will open up the top
to allow sunshine inside. Have already pruned the "rain limbs," those
annoying branches that shoot up on limbs already trained.

The late frost was not that bad so the blooms are opening now. There is
the hope of fruit this year. Will pick the few kumquats left on that
tree later today. Took a peak at the fig tree this morning and leaf buds
are appearing. Ma Nature is doing her job well here. The bay tree
cutting we brought with us from Louisiana is growing well in it's second
year in the ground so we will always have bay available. I do miss my
sassafras tree in Louisiana, now I have to buy gumbo file. We grow a lot
of herbs and dehydrate them. All the members of our very large extended
family and friends get containers of home grown, organic, dried herbs
for Christmas every year and all seem happy to get them, so far.

Was going to get another lemon tree but found out our ex-son-in-law has
a Bears lemon in his yard and is willing to give me large bags of them.
I may yet learn to like him after 35 years of being around him. G We
freeze lemon juice in ice trays and bag them for fresh lemon juice year
around. Back to work in the garden.