Gardening windfall
For the past 5 years I have failed to really get anything to grow in my back yard. I've dug up huge chunks of the garden, sieving out all the inappropriate material (chunks of broken concrete, rusty somethings, broken bricks, bags of lime, plastic bags filled with "I don't want to know", blue-chip rubble, red pebbles) leaving just the sand and plant matter. I've been through multiple different brands of soil wetting agents. Dug all sorts of soil enriching material into the sand (from here on will be referred to as DEATH), but nothing seems to work.
I planted three fruit trees about 3 years ago. They should be over 6 foot by now, but haven't grown any taller than when I planted them, despite me applying additional nutrients and soil enriching agents every 6-12 months.
Last year I ripped up a strip of DEATH, and replaced the hole with home grown compost blended with an assortment of manures. To make sure things worked, I dug a trench about a meter deep and promptly had what I dug out (sand, building rubble, burnt rubbish, abandoned bags of lime, abandoned bags of cement, more bags of "I don't want to know") removed from my suburb, hopefully never to darken my doorstep again. Into this new mini garden bed I shoved a whole bunch of grape vine cuttings. This exercise was inspired by the fact I knew I was going to have to prune the grape vines, and hated the idea of wasting what I cut off. Now this bed is happily growing about 20 little vines.
I took this same approach to a portion of the pre-existing "garden bed" out my back yard. This patch has never managed to grow anything other than the toughest of weeds. In some spots even the weeds won't grow. I only managed to dig down about half a meter before I was stopped by the remnants of a brick wall, that fortunately ran the edge where I wanted to separate the garden bed from the lawn. I simply removed the lot, and replaced it with a better blend of compost and manures. I filled this new garden bed with pea seeds.
This morning when I went outside to feed the fish, that little patch was covered in pea shoots.
I think this has proven to me that it doesn't matter how much goodness I pump into my DEATH it will never grow what I want. I just have to remove the lot and import something that doesn't suck.
Anybody want several tons of lifeless sand that will deter most weeds? Great for those out there who don't want a garden.
I planted three fruit trees about 3 years ago. They should be over 6 foot by now, but haven't grown any taller than when I planted them, despite me applying additional nutrients and soil enriching agents every 6-12 months.
Last year I ripped up a strip of DEATH, and replaced the hole with home grown compost blended with an assortment of manures. To make sure things worked, I dug a trench about a meter deep and promptly had what I dug out (sand, building rubble, burnt rubbish, abandoned bags of lime, abandoned bags of cement, more bags of "I don't want to know") removed from my suburb, hopefully never to darken my doorstep again. Into this new mini garden bed I shoved a whole bunch of grape vine cuttings. This exercise was inspired by the fact I knew I was going to have to prune the grape vines, and hated the idea of wasting what I cut off. Now this bed is happily growing about 20 little vines.
I took this same approach to a portion of the pre-existing "garden bed" out my back yard. This patch has never managed to grow anything other than the toughest of weeds. In some spots even the weeds won't grow. I only managed to dig down about half a meter before I was stopped by the remnants of a brick wall, that fortunately ran the edge where I wanted to separate the garden bed from the lawn. I simply removed the lot, and replaced it with a better blend of compost and manures. I filled this new garden bed with pea seeds.
This morning when I went outside to feed the fish, that little patch was covered in pea shoots.
I think this has proven to me that it doesn't matter how much goodness I pump into my DEATH it will never grow what I want. I just have to remove the lot and import something that doesn't suck.
Anybody want several tons of lifeless sand that will deter most weeds? Great for those out there who don't want a garden.