New Gardeners! Why did you start?

I wish I had a photo handy of the wonderfull crop of rocks I've harvested already! Looked at that way, this yard is incredibly productive. Thanks to past galciers, it sports an INCREDIBLE variety of native wild rocks. Nothing impoverished about mky rock population's gene pool!

None of those inbred or genetically modified rocks, either! No sir, just pure, natural, organic rocks eactly the way they came out of the earth.

In fact, even though they were never bred for it, I bet that I could pick them green and ship them all over the world without bruising, spoiling, or losing any of their fresh-picked flavor. Those rocks have shelf lives that are practically geological! You would not believe the expiration dates on my rocks.

I've got one small hill of excavated but unscreened clay, another hill of screened stones, rocks and pebbles, and then a few small raised beds where the soil has been gathered together and improved.

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

well, home grown organic rock garden...hmmm...i see Ebay potential there.

speedie--i remember those kinda folks, when some of the locals ask me about gardening, i tell them the hardest thing about gardening isnt tilling the soil, weeding, or taking the top grass off...it's the wait.

>> I wish I could send you some of what we sell, it's really nice stuff!

I wish that, too! I happen to know that "Cedar Grove" gets biosolids free fropm the town of Everett befoe they compost it further with even more sawdust and yard waste, then charge $35 per yard. PPPFFFTTT.

If I had a truck, and could get it really filthy,. I could haul my own Class A biosolids and have the biggest compost heap in town. If they let me!

The park manager recently came by to tell me to fill in the walkways between my raised beds, do more weeding, chip my branches, remove this bed, hide those things away, etc etc. I'm hoping to placate him with minimal compliance. On the upside, he siad they have a "tree contractor" come b y once each summer, and he would ask the guy to dump me a few yards of wood chips. Even if I have to buy and haul bags of manure/compost mix in my Ford Escort's trunk, I could compost that with pleasure!

>> 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.

Maybe tell them to bring in a handful of the soil surrounding the dead plants for you to "analyze".

If they say the soil is too hard for them to get their fingers into, remind them that they need to grow in SOIL, not concrete.

Or grow in pots.

I would like to give away seedlings at the park where I live, but I picture the over-55 residents looking at a seedling in a Dixie cup, then looking at their bulldozer-scraped, compacted-clay "soil" and parking the Dixie cup on top of the clay.


The sad thing is that even breaking up that clay won't help: shattering and then amending a hole below grade just creates a deep mud wallow. Like a hole in concrete. You need to dig down, create a "floor" that sloopes toward one edge or corner, and then away from that colrner, always going deeper in a downhill direction until you reach a spot where the grade is lower than the floor of your bed.

Or build a raised bed and buy or make the soil.

Before someone gently explained that you should MOISTEN hard clay if you wnat to break it up, I had to swing a very heavy pick 'way up over my head just to chip that stuff.

When we were children we would leave the city and go to the country to a small house that belonged to our Grandparents. To plant large gardens that were hand turned and we pumped the buckets of water from the creek to throw down the rows to jar the food for the winter every summer. My father would go back to the city and arrive every Friday, to go to the market in a town near by for some meat and take back the boxes of jars we had filled.

Then came WWII and we really needed to because we didn't have money to buy much even during the winter with everything we needed required money PLUS ration stamps. Every year the goal had always been to get close to 50 jars of each of the planted, able to jar things. Plus foods were... We walked 3 miles each way, to pick blueberry's for as many as we could carry back in the agate buckets along with "drops" from the local apple orchard that we visited up there to pick to make applesauce, we bought peaches and pears at the farm stands, as well.

I remember the year "Burpee" came out with "BIG BOY" Wow, we could pick a really large tomato and each get 1 bread slice + 1, 1/2" slice of that tomato to made lunch for all 4 of us kids!.

I didn't grow anything for years after because I hated the squash, all the cabbage we had to eat and that many string beans to make into equal size pieces! As well as the memory of the juice that I could never stand running down my hands/arms from the fruits that needed to be pealed after blanching!...... I also have the memory of my Mom working so hard in the kitchen to boil all the jars, in the large oval copper wash tub and the lids as well on the wood stove with the 6 metal plates because there was only a small 4 burner bottled gas stove for the food to be cooking on and all the jars in the large pressure cooker for somethings too at the same time!

I have grown some gardens after I bought this land in the 80's but now that we finally moved here after 9/11 away from too close to a Nuclear Plant, I plant some mostly the yellow tomatoes I have to eat for the others have too much acid for me to enjoy. Some years I add some herbs too but now only plant into buckets so not turning the garden anymore! I do buy fresh and only keep can goods for emergency use for vegetables because of the flavor loss! Enjoyed reading these posts, Thanks.

Rick - how far are you from the beach? Seaweed is as close to perfect as one can get as far as "soil amendments" go.

>> Rick - how far are you from the beach?

Only a few miles, but I would have to hunt for a public beach. The only place that comes to mind is a very very snooty neighborhood with gated condos and names like "Harbour Pointe".

I never tried - isn't it loaded with salt? Do you collect it wet or dry? If dry, I suppose I could bag it and fill my Ford Escort's trunk and back seat.

Probably less risk of being chased by security guards if I wiated till fall and drove to less snooty neighborhoods and sorunged bags of leaves. Making the time always seems to be the problem. My current fallback is $1.25 bags of a "manure-compost mix". I thin that means the manure is also partly composted, because it's a lot drier, less smelly, and more uniform than what you find in a stable.

If I had a truck, my wildest dream would be to fill that truck with free biosolids from the Everett plant, bring it home and wallow in it (not really WALLOW, haul it in a wheelbarrow to the side yard).

I'm not new to the garden( feel like it often enough) Why i started with gardening.

I JUST LIKE TO GET DIRTY!!!!

It is VERY nice to read all of your post and problems solved however, there are very few posters here that have close to any of the climate or grounds like the others, looks to be a big problem.

Our ground for example in the Blue Mountains of Pa. range so different even from the next property let alone range over. That all went into why I bought this property It was part of a corn field and trees only across the front that came down when power was put in. I saw the earth that looked good for gardens and a nice view so I though this is my "Dreams End"!

The property next door to this field has rocks that can be removed in layers great "quarry area" for them to use for walls as you go down the road etc. The next range you wouldn't like for any gardening at all because they have no soil visible just a flaking off of the 1" thick rocks that you end up with almost mica that you can't bring any of their "look like rock pieces" home to use in the pond area small waterfalls because after 1 winter it is a pile of half dollar size pieces.

We have soil on this mountain with almost all the rocks the same size as your open hand in layers when we opened the electric power wire trench that required to be 5 ft deep it looked like a wall without cement and a lot of picking when you try gardening cause they keep pushing up every year and every shovel full has at least 2-3 rocks that I always wheeled to the front gutter with a 7 degree slope.

All that time the only thing that saved our garden was the "compost pile" that all the leaves from the woods and our neighbors went into a pile 4 ft deep (surrounded by fence to help stop the rabbits) to rot down by spring then we turned it under and covered with black paper or shingles that held the secret not to let the sun on the earth to dry it out with only holes for individual plants.. All that after doing the gardens for the first 10 years without any water became lawn since that was 250 ft behind the house and taps and too far to drag the hose in years like these without a lot of rain. .

So after getting this old with the knees not what they were.... I'll continue to read what may help but my growing tomato plants on the window sills will probably go into those containers I gathered last year I figured it was better, everything from 5 gal water jugs cut off to salad buckets from the deli store etc. I have them ready.

I hope to get a huge scoop of "clean out' they sell at the local garden store that they get from the mushroom houses in Pa. . I'm NOT positive what exactly that I'll doctor it up with MAYBE COW PATTIES would help?? that I could put into water to mix ?? OR just some bags of dirt OR time release food pellets??? Any experience of any of these before??

All needed for .. my 5 mystery varieties of tomato seed packets , now plants from Walmart with the only yellow seeds I could find in it instead of an on the internet buy.. ..We will still have the chance of frost till the end of May here. . So our growing season requires large plants by then if you want to see product by winter...... Even harder would be to pay over $5.59 for each of the plants at the stores ready to put out here!

Rick -

My parents and I collected it right after a storm. Yes it was wet and yes it must have been laden with salt. My mother said the salt would kill the bugs, and she must have been correct because we used to grow the same vegetables in exactly the same spot every year. She also said the winter rains would wash the salt out of the seaweed.

We hauled it home in burlap sacks in the trunk of an old Ford. We're going back about 60 years here, Rick!

>> She also said the winter rains would wash the salt out of the seaweed.

I guess that would work for me, as long as I only used it wherte I've created drainage. I have super-heavy clay (I won't say "clay soil" because the unimproved stuff barely supports weeds).

Rick - the soil my parents had was WONDEFUL deep loam! I hadn't thought about clay soil tying up salt. Maybe you should try it in a small area, first.

>> Maybe you should try it in a small area, first.

Always good advice. But for now, I'm sticking with bags from Lowes & HD, with an ambition to snatch leaves some year. The park manager said he can get me a dumptruck of wood chips once per summer.

Or I could ask "my" Chinese restaurant for some of their garbage ... the fruit stand's rejects were already spoken for.

Rick - when we lived in South Florida it was easy to get a dump truck into our yard. We just pulled back a portion of the fence, the truck drove in, dumped his load, and we spread the aged horse manure.

We don't have that luxury here. The load would have to be dumped on the driveway, which means we'd have to shovel it into a garden cart and wheel it into the garden. We are too old for that kind of heavy work!

>> we'd have to shovel it into a garden cart and wheel it into the garden

That's what I have to do. In the case of bags, I lug them out opf the trunk into a wheelbarropw, tghen trundle them to where they're needed.

The garden is where I get 99% of my exercise!

I just wish I could do it without kneeling or stooping. With my legs, kneeling is impossible and stooping is painful. I find workarounds inclusing raised beds and sunken walkways.

Rick,

Did you see my comment about the "Garden Scoot" that my daughters bought me? It is great for working near the ground instead of bending or kneeling. I don't remember which thread I posted on about it, but here is a picture. It is steerable, has a pull bar for moving it around, and includes a shallow tray under the seat for small items, as well as a basket on the back that can hold a 5-gallon bucket or a garden basket. They bought it online, from Gardeners Supply.

David

The scoot looks handy for larger areas than mine. My growing areas are 1-2 square yards here, and another square yard over there.

I've thought of a very lightweight kneeler-sitter, but the affordable ones I've seen are rated for people weighing less than I do.

Hi all, I like this thread! Great idea!
I really started gardening when I was a toddler with my Papa but then didn't take an interest as I grew up. So when I started gardening myself if was because I was recovering from illness. I wasn't well enough to work or be back at university, but I was well enough to start working on a little project and I started growing vegetables in containers in 2010. I don't know why I chose that to be my project, but I got the gardening bug that year anyway! I grew more last year when I was still staying with my parents in PA but at the end of last summer I moved back home to Edinburgh, Scotland and my 2nd floor apartment. My plan for this year was to try to get some windowboxes going, but I actually find myself back living with my parents again, recovering from shoulder surgery which I had at the end of February. I have to have therapy for 5 months and be able to see the surgeon again so I have to stay in the US again, which complicates my life in so many ways... BUT it does mean I can enjoy some wonderful summer weather (never guaranteed in Scotland!) and a garden for the summer. Look on the bright side!

Honestly, I started because I was looking for a hobby that was relatively inexpensive. Being a single mom doesnt afford much extra cash, plus, I figured it would be a hobby that would benefit the entire household.