On 09/16/2016 04:10 PM, Derald wrote:
Elsewhere, T wrote:

I am about 8 inches down. The rocks have become
pretty big and take about 20 minutes of work to
extract.

I tell myself I will only have to do this once.
The other part of me says, but you will continue
to expand and have to do this over and over and
over. I am reminded of farms I have seen with
rock walls made from rocks they dug out. I must
have taken them years!

Well, why do it, then? Follow your neighbor's lead and grow in
raised beds. It's easy to start small using containers and to scale the
garden to match ones experience, skill level and resources.

Hi Derald,

To answer your question, it is because this endless recession has
hit me so hard that I can not afford it. I can barely buy food
for the family. Manual labor: I have in good supply.

And if I don't push the envelope, I will never learn anything.
This group has good teachers.

After doing it this way, I agree with Songbird's assessment
on raised beds. So, it was a blessing in disguise.

As for small containers, my manual labor substitute is to "carve"
out holes (I call them ground pots) and beds in my rocks/dirt
(I would not call it soil). Ground pots are cheap and they don't
blow over. They also have good drainage. And, I am not
prepping places I don't use.

I pile the bottom full of weeds and vegetable table scraps.
Then I mix in my high Ph dirt with organic fertilizer and
peat moss (a form of vegi table scraps plus a few 100,000
years).

So, far, it is working marvelously. I got decent peppers
and egg plant this year. The zukes are still a bit
slow on producing, but I hae so many that I have been
freezing about have what I cook up now for about three weeks.

As I said, this group has good teachers.

-T

Hopefully, the recession's back will be broken here in a
few months with the coming change of power in our government.