Viewing post #487355 by RoseBlush1

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Sep 22, 2013 1:02 PM CST
Name: Lyn
Weaverville, California (Zone 8a)
Celebrating Gardening: 2015 Garden Sages Garden Ideas: Level 1
hazelnut .........

Thank you for the encouragement. All I am doing is what nature does on its own. When I brought in the first load of mulch, I brought in food for the bacteria and made a more friendly environment for the worms that found the cultivated areas on their own. The weeds have done their part to help break up the compacted stuff, too.

I cannot buy soil to bring into the garden or even mulch up here. I live in an old gold mining town in the lower Cascade mountains. I've turned into a real gleaner and have experimented with different types of mulch materials to find out what helps bring the stuff to life. All of my mulch materials break down very quickly, so there is a lot of hard labor to bring in mulch materials. I gather material from the forest and from friends' properties where they have far more trees than I do. I get alfalfa dust from under the pallets at the feed store, plus their rotten hay for my compost pile.

My compost pile is located over the area where I plan to build a raised bed for vegetables. I want the stuff under the raised bed to be alive soil, so that any of the roots of the vegetables that want to go lower than the height of the raised bed will go down into live soil instead of stuff. The vegetable garden will not succeed until I figure out a way to provide some shade. The garden is located between the slope at the back of my property and the house, so it traps heat and cold. It is the intense heat that is harder on all of the plants I have put into the garden more than the cold.

Learning how to garden in what my friends call "glacier slurry" has been a true adventure, because the water does not go where you plan for it to go. What's under the surface plays an important role as to how the water moves through the stuff. I am grateful for the clay because it does hold the moisture and I don't have to worry about walking on it when it is wet because there is so much rock in the stuff, so it does not compact any more than it already is compacted.

This is my first in-ground garden, so I've made plenty of novice mistakes in learning how to garden in glacier slurry. But I am learning. In a way, it's been kind of an adventure. There are no books to tell me how to turn stuff into soil without having to buy amendments, which I cannot purchase up here even if I could afford them. When I started, there were few gardening internet sites. The only nursery up here does not sell quality plants and I have found that as a novice, it's better to start with healthy plants than half dead plants that I have to rescue. So, I've made it up as I go along.

I am currently growing mostly ornamentals. I have planted over 100 roses ... removing those that are not suited to this climate ... and am now learning how to grow other plants. I am a rose nut and my dream was to create this fantastic garden of roses that are no longer in commerce and to grow my own food. It's taking a lot longer than I planned, that's all.

Since I know more than the average gardener about roses, I can learn from the roses what is working and what I need to change to have healthier plants.

I may not end up with the garden of my dreams, but I will have a garden.

Smiles,
Lyn
I'd rather weed than dust ... the weeds stay gone longer.

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