Beginner Gardening: New Gardeners! Why did you start?, 1 by speediebean

speediebean wrote:
Haaaaahaahahahaaaa Rick, you are so funny!!!!!! I'm sorry to hear that your local 'compost' supply is so poor, I wish I could send you some of what we sell, it's really nice stuff! Just composted leaves, grass clippings, and small twigs. When I started amending one area of my biggest bed out front, all I did was use the mulching capability of my mower on a large bunch of leaves, then dump all of 'em into that area and mix 'em in with my gardening fork. Then waited. A full year. < =/ The next year the soil was a LOT better and actually dig-able without giving me a hernia or anything! =) Yes, there were still some parts of leaves that were identifiable as leaves, but for the most part it had decayed and had become very nice black loamy stuff. And yes, there were rocks too. I left 'em in there, just in case it was still too clay-ey and needed the rocks for drainage. I figured, there was lots of earthworms in there so I wasn't gonna worry too too much. Heck, I even found a big ol' spike from when the house was built, so I saved it to use as a 'tool'. Came in handy when I needed holes to insert my little Adirondack picket fencing around the area! (I'll share a pic of the spike that I found... I think it was a left-over from putting the I-beams up in the ceiling of the basement, but I'm not sure).

I, too, have been lured into the "Really Lazy Gardener" trap, but that was long before I learned anything about how to actually grow stuff and take care of it and expect it to live and thrive. Now I get amazed at people (customers at work) who want to just plop their new acquisitions into this local clay garbage and expect it to do ok. When they come in to buy stuff, I always ask 'em "How's your soil? Do you have compost at home? You're going to want it when you install your new babies!!". Only about half of 'em take me up on the offer, the rest come back later complaining about how OUR plants that we sold them died. I WARNED YOU!! < =D