Texas gardening
Submitted by MariePK on Fri, 10/26/2007 - 13:59
I thought maybe we could share some tips on ground conditioning and how to nourish our gardens and beds here.
I live near the coast and for months during the summer, we had nothing but rain, and my ground is almost like packed sand over clay. I need to put some life into this old washed out dirt, even my native plants are wimpy, and would like to know what ya'll do to renourish the ground under these circumstances.
I worked up the ground in a couple of places and some of the clods were as hard packed as rock and I had to whack the clods with a shovel to break them up.
Thought maybe some knowing soul would be willing to share with me, how to get my beds back into good growing plots. What can I add to bring it alive again? Thank any of you Texans that know our growing conditions for all the help you can give me.
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That's a great idea! It's
Susan, the Texas Yankee, the Texas Rangerette and the Assistant Administrator
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Bless your heart, I'm going
Bless your heart, I'm going to look for that stuff at H.E.B. They just opened a brand new super store here and should have it.
I have 5 lots,(my own property) and I have several areas around mama's old house where I have kept up her old flower beds. I add stuff like pearlite, composted manure and sack after sack of soil conditioner. I also use a lot of peat moss mixed into that, and plants seem to like it a lot but I would need a truckload of each to do the whole yard. I save my kitchen veggie scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds etc to sort of compost with. Mama used to take her veggie scraps and bury them in the area she had worked up for her spring garden.
I have access to a tiller and think we are going to use it this weekend and hope we don't break the blade.Not so many rocks but I think that rain washed most of the dirt away and left the clay!!!
We have worked so hard, burning brush and moving a pile of dirt for the last 3 weeks that I'm not sure I can keep moving for another weekend.
Then we got a windstorm with that coolfront and it blew nearly as many branches and twigs as we burned week before last. Never ending cleanup around here but it is a blessing to have my own place.
I have numerous trees and native plants, too many to list right now and a few special plants that I strive to keep living and after this unusually wet summer, need all the advice I can get on how to have a decent yard next year. I also want to start a small veggie garcen again, and pray that I can have a decent yield of tomatoes, crook necked squals, okra and cukes. Those are the main veggies I love and will try to get a little fence up so I can have some pole beans of some sort. I also want to find some blackberry plants because the wild dewberries are pretty scraggly and I NEED MORE than a couple of handfuls of berries. I'm craving a dewberry cobbler right now!!! hehe
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They still have that stuff
They still have that stuff outside, but I don't know how long they will keep it there if the weather keeps staying cold like it is. Last night, our temps dropped to 37.
Have you thought of vermicomposting? That's where you compost food scraps with red wiggler worms....They eat the stuff and cause it to decompose more quickly. They also shed their skin or whatever and leave worm casings that nourish the soil.
If I were you, with as much property as you have, I would compost everything I could, because using that stuff will be far cheaper than buying dirt with those amendments added.
Did you see the picture I posted of those Chinese Red Noodle Beans in the bean patch I created for Mr. Rosie? Those beans are supposed to do really well in very hot weather, and by golly, they sure did. I don't know whether they took too long to get started because of the amount of rain we all had, or if I didn't plant them early enough seeing as I am new to gardening in TX. I suspect I could have had a far bigger crop then I did -- even though I only planted a few seeds.
In Iowa, you'd be lucky if you could plant tomatoes in the ground by the 15th of May......or anything else for that matter -- even peas, radishes and lettuce.
Too bad more cities don't take the yard wastes that they pick up and compost those and let people come back and get the compost.
Have you thought of Lasagna Gardening? There was an article in Mother Earth News way back in April or May of 1999 about Lasagna gardening. You pile everything from newspaper that are wetted to grass and leaves to food scraps on top of each other in layers.....It's like creating a rasied bed without having to resort to all of the work, plus you can do this in places where the soil isn't so good.
Lowes has soil testing kits. That might be worth purchasing so you know what's wrong with the dirt in terms of nutrients. Then you can go from there and see what would be best for it -- not just for the sake of drainage but for making it a hospitable place for growing the things you want to grow.
Susan, the Texas Yankee and the Forum Manager
Click here to see my trade list: http://www.gardenhere.org/node...
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I don't get my check til
I don't get my check til next Saturday and I will pray that they keep that stuff out til then. They probably store some of it in a warehouse (I hope).
I save all my newspapers and do bury a lot of it under dead leaves and then toss coffee grounds, tea bags, veggie peelings etc. on top. I want to make a garden 16 ft square for my veggie garden, but don't know if I'll get it plowed up this fall. If I do, I plan to spend the winter laying newspaper and the other layers so it will be easy to work up by spring. I WANT to add wigglers to my soil and someone told me just a few weeks ago that I might find some at a bait shop, so next time I go to Pt. Lavaca I will stop at one of the bait shops there on the coast. Or maybe I'll ask my son (who lives there) to bring me a sack of worms for Christmas.:o) I have some friends that run cattle and need to get out there with a garbage can and shovel and collect my own manure. It works really good because you can select some that is already dry and cured to mix in with peat, and perlite to make an awesome mix.
A few years ago, my nephew brought me some, and it worked wonders, so I need to get on the ball.
I have one lot that is pretty well clear of anything but trees but would like to have a circle of ground cover around those. A very low ground cover that doesn't mind being mowed, because we have rattlesnakes, copperheads and cottonmouths, in a really dry year. I need to scout around and find something for that. I made the mistake a few years ago, putting wandering jew around a couple of trees and it almost took over the yard. Had it EVERYWHERE!!
Guess I'd better get up and do something today, or I'll be another day behind.
First on my list is to go out and push the wheel barrow around and clear all the dry branches, twigs etc, that the cool front wind knocked out of trees out of the yards. Looks pretty messy out there. If someone can tell me how to mail tiny golden rain trees,(4 to 6 inches), I will have a million of them for trade come spring. I'll try to collect some seed yet, but a lot of them got ripped from the trees and scattered to kingdom come out there. What a mess!!!
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Marie I've been composting
I was out working in the
Marie, our soil up in
Marie, our soil up in Central Texas just beyond Austin doesn't sound too different from yours. It's horrible clay like gunk that's filled with sand and rocks....lots of rocks. It doesn't drain well at all.........I found some stuff at HEB -- it's soil for bedding plants and on the bag, it specifies that it is for improved drainage and before I planted some cannas, I dug into the soil as much as I could. It sure was hard to dig in, too....There were hard rocks everywhere. Then I added more after I planted the cannas, and it made a huge difference. I shudder to think though, how much it would cost to add this stuff or till it into the soil if I had to do it to a very large area! My hubby tells me this is why so few folks in Texas have basements. But I can't figure out how they could dig deep enough to build in ground swimming pools and not basements -- unless you dig considerably deeper for a basement than you do for a pool. If I were in your shoes, I would probably rent a tiller. Mind you, I dont' bother with the soil as much as I would if I owned my own home, but I still like to plant stuff. I would till up the soil as deep as I can. Then I would get some huge backs of some good draining soil that has all sorts of good draining organic matter added to it and I would till that stuff back into the soil.
You had much more rain down where you are than we did up here..........So eventually, stuff did grow and grew well for me. I don't have a clue how one can plan a garden in Texas when you don't know from one year to the next whether you're going to be suffering from a horrible drought -- as was the case up here for the two previous years, or flooding rains as was the case this year!
Thanks for starting this thread....I think it's a brilliant idea!
Susan, the Texas Yankee and the Forum Manager
Click here to see my trade list: http://www.gardenhere.org/node...
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