David E. Ross wrote:
....
Have you considered perennial vegetables? They can be integrated with
your ornamentals.

I have a clump of artichokes growing as an accent in my back lawn. We
get a few edible artichoke buds in the spring. In your coastal area,
they should actually do much better than in my inland area.

I also have asparagus in the back of one of my beds. It can grow quite
tall and bushy in the summer. In the spring, you can get enough spears
for several meals.

Here, the problem with asparagus is heavy soil. The asparagus did quite
well for about 30 years. Then we had an exceptionally wet winter, and
the plants rotted. They had dropped some seeds, which sprouted. Just
as the seedlings matured to the point of providing us for a few meals,
we had another very wet winter that rotted these self-sown replacements.
Now I have seedlings from them. Maybe I'll get a good crop in about
two years.

is it impossible to trench it for better
drainage? might avoid further rot troubles
and interruptions in production.

still, if you managed to do well for 30
years it may be the case that you had worked
some organic material down in deep enough
that it improved the drainage enough, but
then it finally rotted and went back to too
heavy and too poorly drained.

i'd open it up again deeply and put down
a drain (either a french drain with a tube
or a french drain with a gravel pit seep)
then add plenty of organic material again.
30 years of reasonable reliable production
is excellent for any planting (including
many trees). a drain/tube/trench may be
overkill, but if i'm digging deeply enough
to plant a root crop around here then i'm
doing a lot of work. it won't be hurt by
adding a drain.

the problem here is simlar (too heavy soil)
and lack of space that isn't already spoken
for. i'd love an asparagus patch. to put one
in would mean clearing the northern hedge and
that's way more work than i'm up for right now.
perhaps in a few years...


songbird