LOGS ? just gave me another idea. Our firewood is cut into narrow pieces like the shale stone in the link. Why wouldnt th e same assembly method work for wood instead od stone..I have to figure out a frame to hold the planted sections together.

http://wildgingerfarm.com/Buil...
The text to the photos above describes the planting mix as "a scree mix consisting of equal parts coarse sand and... crushed rock" but from the appearance of it (black colour), it's clear it's actually a humus-y soil* ... but whatever works in your area, given the climate and how much drainage you need to provide. Also, some plants prefer more more organic soil while some need very lean (little organic matter) substrates.

I used a rich mix, as in the tutorial above, in my first tufa garden, and have always felt it was too rich, promoting too much plant growth (I want plants to stay in character - small and tight, as they would be in nature) and restricting drainage... I went with a much leaner mix (an actual mix of sand and grit with very little soil) in the later beds that were added on.

*Oh, I see it does say "amended with" soil... (quite a lot of it, apparently).

Here is the first tufa garden, with the rich mix, then covered over with 1" tufa gravel:


And the later additions, in various stages of completion and filled with much leaner soil, and again a top dressing of 1" tufa gravel; a yard of "topsoil" (clay soil) was only used as a base for contouring and setting the rocks in place:

ge1836 said:LOGS ? just gave me another idea. Our firewood is cut into narrow pieces like the shale stone in the link. Why wouldnt th e same assembly method work for wood instead od stone..I have to figure out a frame to hold the planted sections together.

A consideration with using wood as a permanent part of the rock garden structure (as opposed to just using it as a temporary support) is that it rots, often within a few years... so you eventually lose the structure you'd built up (plus the character of the soil changes, becoming much more organic than you might have intended - may or may not be a problem, depending on how fussy your plants are).

Would carpenter ants be a reason not to use wood in the rock garden? I've seen what they can do to a wood-frame house!

Maybe I will just rig up a free standing planter and not put it in soil.

Just my 2 cents. I dump the rock in a big random pile. Then add a few hundred pounds of sand and gravel on top. A few shovels of dirt Top dress with gravel then add more rocks for looks and to create areas to plant under, between and around.
That way when it does start to erode it looks natural like a pile of rocks with a few plants in it.

a2b1c3 said:Just my 2 cents. I dump the rock in a big random pile. Then add a few hundred pounds of sand and gravel on top. A few shovels of dirt Top dress with gravel then add more rocks for looks and to create areas to plant under, between and around.
That way when it does start to erode it looks natural like a pile of rocks with a few plants in it.

Sounds good! Do you let it settle for a while prior to planting? Do you water it down to pack the soil?
Packing the soil in around the rocks is the most time-consuming part in the rock garden beds I've made, not to say it's necessary, all depending on the circumstances. (In this cold climate, I imagine that air-filled voids would be a bad thing.)
I'm sure everyone would love to see some pics of yours... hint, hint! What are you growing in your rock gardens? Cacti (judging from your avatar)?

growitall said:...I have always felt it was too rich, promoting too much plant growth (I want plants to stay in character - small and tight, as they would be in nature)...

Ah! So that's the reasoning behind using the lean fill; it's not necessarily because the plants can't tolerate it, but that they grow looser and floppier in a rich mix? Plus, it retains more moisture, adding to the prevalence of rot?

Wow! So many questions are being answered here!

a2b1c3 said:Just my 2 cents. I dump the rock in a big random pile. Then add a few hundred pounds of sand and gravel on top. A few shovels of dirt Top dress with gravel then add more rocks for looks and to create areas to plant under, between and around.
That way when it does start to erode it looks natural like a pile of rocks with a few plants in it.

Thanks for your input.
I have one of those types of beds here (built for drainage rather than expressly for rock garden plants), but the major mistake I made, I think, was to put in rich soil and no gravel or sand. Over the years the rich soil and rocks settled right in, but then again, so did every opportunistic weed that happened by. It isn't even possible to weed in it without painstakingly levering out one rock at a time, while still finding that those grassy roots are even more deeply embedded, and even more levering is required. This I'd definitely want to avoid duplicating.

If I keep it lean and loose then those chance weed seedlings that do show up should be much easier to remove, right?

Nope i dont water it sand and gravel is good at filling voids and change in the bed is good not bad
heres some photos of the one i made in my yard.
I used roughly one ton of rock and about 200 pounds each of tube sand and the cheapest gravel i can buy around here ( i think it might of been 5/8 minus
And yes, to my thinking and climate the only thing i would MAKE a rock garden to garden is cactus and succulents. But hey thats me. Throw some creosote and sagebrush up in there
it is small like 3 to 4 feet wide and about 7 feet long. It is about 20 inches above the ground at its highest. I did not dig down or remove the grass just dumped right on top.

ps when i say soil i only added 2 spadefuls of regular dirt from my yard. Then mixed with gravel/ sand for like 10 seconds with the same spade. Dont overdo it

here is a rock garden pond


Great for growing moss

Fungi
can be the biggest problem with decaying organic material.
Many alpine plants and others are not adapted to living with fungi and can and will perish in fungus-y soil.

chelle said:



If I keep it lean and loose then those chance weed seedlings that do show up should be much easier to remove, right?

actually, seedlings and weeds love to grow in lean/loose as well.
tiny seedlings are easier to pull (just about anywhere). anything established, however, can be very difficult to remove because their roots are everywhere and under rocks etc.. the worst thing about trying to remove established weeds from a lean/loose medium is that it is too easy to disrupt the roots of everything else around them when compared to regular soil (which holds together better). best is not to let unwanted things establish. trust me!

I wonder if it is, perhaps, more that the conditions in which there is abundant fungi growth (heavy organics, lack of drainage, lingering damp) are not the conditions favoured generally by alpines?

dirtdorphins said:

actually, seedlings and weeds love to grow in lean/loose as well.
tiny seedlings are easier to pull (just about anywhere). anything established, however, can be very difficult to remove because their roots are everywhere and under rocks etc.. the worst thing about trying to remove established weeds from a lean/loose medium is that it is too easy to disrupt the roots of everything else around them when compared to regular soil (which holds together better). best is not to let unwanted things establish. trust me!

Hear Hear ! Check once a week and for me if i cant pull it ( near a prickly pear or whatever ) i squish the green bit. If i get it early it wont have the energy to re grow and i assume it dies. That does not work with established weeds

growitall said:I wonder if it is, perhaps, more that the conditions in which there is abundant fungi growth (heavy organics, lack of drainage, lingering damp) are not the conditions favoured generally by alpines?

Of course, that too.
But take Daphne, for example, propagation is all but impossible without antifungals even under ideal conditions...and check out this guy's take on it
http://www.seidelbast.net/cult...

Well, I only grow one daphne (D. retusa) and not very well at that. If you are interested in Daphne, the varied species are pretty much mainstays for woody plants in the rock garden. You can find lots of accounts on growing and propagating them at both the NARGS and SRGC sites (see the second link, especially).
http://www.srgc.net/forum/inde...
http://www.srgc.net/forum/inde...

Yes, thank you. I am a big fan of the daphnes.
Point is that the rocky/lean dwellers are very susceptible to fatal fungal infections prior to and separate from the basic, poor-drainage induced root-rot that most plants can't tolerate either.

growitall said:http://wildgingerfarm.com/BuildaTufaRockGarden.htm
The text to the photos above describes the planting mix as "a scree mix consisting of equal parts coarse sand and... crushed rock" but from the appearance of it (black colour), it's clear it's actually a humus-y soil* ... but whatever works in your area, given the climate and how much drainage you need to provide. Also, some plants prefer more more organic soil while some need very lean (little organic matter) substrates.

I used a rich mix, as in the tutorial above, in my first tufa garden, and have always felt it was too rich, promoting too much plant growth (I want plants to stay in character - small and tight, as they would be in nature) and restricting drainage... I went with a much leaner mix (an actual mix of sand and grit with very little soil) in the later beds that were added on.

plus some more awesome photos--Thank You

Yes, there is not one answer that fits all here because there are so many variables to consider, the most important being what a particular plant needs when that is the plant you are trying to grow.

(I acquired too many house plants because I had a friend who kept giving me plants that were fired (not dead but not happy) from the buildings he was contracted to care for--just because a plant tolerates low light and not being watered or watered too much doesn't mean they perform well for the duration, in the darkest corner of the office with inappropriate water regimes, for example.)

Anyway, some plants absolutely require a lean, free-draining mix, some prefer it, some behave better with it, and some can't live like that. And that is determined by the particular plant.
Climate and other environmental factors--temperature extremes, relative humidity, precipitation amount/type/frequency/seasonal variations, soil type and grade, etc., are all important considerations too. Some things we can manipulate--others not so much.

For me in the high desert it is undoubtedly different than for a2b1c3--I don't really have to do anything special to grow many cold-hardy cacti, but I don't grow them. (isn't it a classic thing to try the stuff that really wants to live somewhere else?)

Growitall has moved to leaner mixes...
I started with pure sand/grit (freaked out about the drainage issue), killed things when I could not water in the summer, and have moved to more soil in the mix...
Probably has everything to do with differences in what we are trying to grow and where we live.

What kinds of plants do you grow, dirtdorphin (unless that's more of subject for one of the other threads here)?