Today, I planted all the seeds, tubers, and seedlings I had been holding. The volunteer sunflower has become the edge of an L-shaped bed around one of the tree stumps. It’s a seed bed containing red corn, beans, sunflowers, alyssium, marjoram, wheatgrass, radishes, bachelor buttons, parsley, nasturium, marigolds, cucumbers, and the rest of the purple potatoes. The low vines will help to smother weeds around the tall corn and sunflowers.
The variety, amount, and types of seeds will help to create a “natural” bed of beneficial and complementary plants. Some won’t make it for whatever reason. Soil is too heavy, competition is too heavy, too much sun, sun blocked out, can’t compete with the weeds or grass, whatever. I can watch and see what to plant next year.
One thing I’m curious about was the Native American planting techniques using squash, corn, and beans. Squash stays low and covers grass and weeds. Beans in rich the soil for the heavy feeding corn and provide a support to climb on. Corn grows tall and straight for the beans. There’s probably a whole lot more to this arrangement. Kind of like says gas for you car comes from oil wells. It does, but you don’t fill your car with crude oil. There’s more to it.
Alyssium in most of the yard. 2 lbs of lawn repair.
Gladiolas, pumpkin, cantalope, watermelon, nasturium, marigolds, elephant ears, and petunias are throughout the yard.
In case the hops don’t produce I planted a few Morning Glories under the pergola trellis.
Pumpkins went in one corner with the fruit trees and a huge portion of the dog pooh. Two hills of cantalope are under the “dead” pecan tree. Looks like dead really means “extremely late budding”. Near them two hills of red watermelons.
Another three El Camino loads of dirt topped off the large garden bed. Walmart’s idea of “Top Soil” is funny. The same with “Composted” in the composted cow manure. Expensive potting soil from Lowe’s topped of the last 2-4 inches. This bed wasn’t mixed as well as the smaller one and has streaks of amendments and types of soil. It’s is a whole lot of work to mix dirt like you would a cake mix. My original intention was to order a truckload of mixed (compost, perlite, top soil, etc.) soil. You know like you see on those gardening shows. However, I couldn’t find that. So, one frackin’ bag at a time. There’s probably 250+ bags of dirt in the two beds.
The reason I worked so hard on these was to avoid the difficulties I had with gardening as a kid. We never had a good garden and apples depended on the frost date and worms. It got to be too hot or something ate everything. I don’t know what happened. That’s a lot of it. I was too young to know anything different than what mom did. No internet, books, or other people. So, this is my attempt to scratch that itch. My resources are far greater know than then. I’ll through any amount of money, thought, and significant time at it to “fix” this memory.
I planted the harvestable purple potatoes in the large bed. The others in the seed bed will make potatoes in super hard clay. Too hard to harvest. The raised beds are super soft right now. I seeded a packet of lettuce. Planted the pole beens and bush beans. Marigold transplants went in the edges. And a petunia between the potatoes. The large bed will be beans and potatoes. The smaller will be tomatoes and herbs. Of course both beds will have copious amounts of herbs and flowers. Near harvest time everything should be bulge or overflowing with leaves, blooms, and vegetables.
This soil is something else. The hardest, clayest, gummiest stuff I ever seen. This house is 40 yr old and the yard has been tended some of that time. There’s quite a bit of organic material in it. Lots and lots of earth worms every single place I dig. Yet, when it dries the ground cracks and without my 190 lb body jumping on the shovel I wouldn’t be able to get it in the ground. And there are many rose bushes along 2 sides and they are thriving. The “require” acidic soil there’s no way these guys are getting that here. Really, nothing has a problem growing. New things come up all the time. I’ve pulled up more oak tree volunteers than elms. Come to think of it. The elms seeds don’t seem to be sprouting. I’m amazed. Oh yeah, today I found the first pecan tree volunteer. I’m not really a fan, but I planted him in a pot. Maybe someone will want a pecan tree known to grown in clay. It’s wierd to see that nut that I’ve eaten so many times with green sprig coming out of it.
Well, enough for now.