Most of us are constantly working on increasing the soil quality of our gardens – both the soil nutrients and the soil structure. Either we’re starting a new garden on less-than-ideal soil or we’re trying to build the soil quality back up after previous crops sapped nutrients from the ground or winter rains compacted the soil. In this post, I will discuss how to enhance the soil
Garden Installation: Part II
With irrigation construction complete, the next phase of our garden installation was site preparation. All that sod had to be removed and it was time to address the soil nutrient and structure needs of our new digs. I’m a big fan of taking pictures through all stages of your homestead’s growth. So this is your gratuitous shot of Juniper on our front porch, marking the
Flowering Perennials for Clay Soil
Clay soil doesn’t have to mean your garden is destined to be anything less than amazing. In fact, there are so many great plant options that I’m doing a whole series this week on flowering perennials, shrubs and trees for clay soil. I wrote a recent post about ways you can improve your clay soil structure by adding organic ingredients like compost, mulch and sand. While that’s
The Great Sheet Mulching 2007 (Part II of III)
I knew I would be doing all of the sheet mulching alone this weekend. I also knew the weather forecast was rain all weekend. To say I haven’t really been looking forward to this weekend would be an understatement. However, I had two gigantic heaps of wood chips on our front yard and someone had to move it. Saturday morning got rolling and I made
The Great Sheet Mulching 2007 (Part I of III)
Our plan is to sheet mulch our entire front and backyard. We want to eliminate all of the grass in our yard and replace it with fruit bearing trees/shrubs and beneficial insect attracting plants. Here is a quick recap of why we don’t want grass: Labor intensive – I want to spend my weekend leisure time putzing around the in garden, not mowing my lawn