Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Composting: What does or doesn't work for you!, 1 by HollyAnnS

HollyAnnS wrote:
Doc, My parents house has a small strip of dirt between the front of the house and the walkway. Last year Mom was complaining that the plants she puts there have done very poorly. Most of them were dying and the few that survived didn't do well at all. Even tho she planted shade loving plants and watered it from time to time. It is very protected, shady and unlikely to get much rainwater. Last spring Ric and I dug up the entire small bed, took out their clay soil and replaced it with dirt and compost from our pile. In the process we noticed that there were no worms in the soil we took out at my Dads house. I've never seen that before. We have a rather distinctive red clay here, anyone that has gotten plants from me could probably tell that they came out of my yard. My Dads clay was yellow, not sure if the lack of worms had to do with their type of dirt or something else. I know Dad had at one time in the past added some compost to this area but you would never have know that from what we dug up.
Mom was so pleased this summer that bed looked better than it has in years. What a big difference replacing that dirt made. We did put some of our worms into a relocation project but tied to make sure that families and neighbors were moved at the same time. It's also a much better neighborhood that they were relocated to. LOL