Hello.

I have a PERFECT spot for a garden at the top of my hill. It is very
flat and gets loads of sunlight. I can do things like set up a soaker
hose or drip system fairly easily. My problem is that there is only a
couple feet of soil over a bunch of fill that I know has to contain a
lot of rocks and such. My house is part of a development that was
built on an old farm sire about 25 years ago. There is a wicked hill
in my back yard that the builders must have amended by building up the
backyards in all the houses on the street by using fill. There is
still a nice bunch of springs that flow freely all year long but they
are dozens of feet underground now. There may be two feet of soil over
this fill if I am lucky.

I have tried several times to grow a garden but I can’t keep the soil
watered well enough for the plants to grow. The water just drains like
it is going through a sieve.

I have tried a raised garden several different times with no luck and
I have tried container gardening but plants just don’t grow for me in
a container (don’t ask me why). Plus I know I can get so much more if
I planted up there and it will be cheaper. I was kicking around at
trying to make some sort of huge raised bed that I would modify to be
self-watering but the work and expense doesn’t seem worth it.

Does anybody have any sort of solution? I was thinking goofy thoughts
like digging down a foot or so and installing a pond liner or
something like that to create a pool of sorts underneath a large area.
If I build a raised bed over this area, once the water reached the top
of the liner, it would start to pour off, so I won’t be drowning my
plants. This seems like the easiest thing to do although maybe not the
cheapest. I am looking for easy, especially in the long haul.

Do you think this would work? Any suggestions at all are welcome!

Thanks,
ray
Add organic material - compost, manure, peat, almost anything. Dig it
in, mulch.
--

09=ix