I think squash or beans would do very well! When I've pulled the plants up at the end of the season, the roots are nearly all horizontal, spreading out, and not very deep.
I'm making more "hugel holes" in my heavy soil garden this year. I dig a deep hole, put in some wood, cover that with a layer of last year's leaves, and bury it. The top few inches will be some compost.
The wood is a dry-rotted maple that came down last fall/winter. Hubby cut up the good wood...
My neighbor (who introduced me to the concept of hugelkultur) used to live in Virginia (or maybe WV?) and her garden plot was red clay. Every few days, she took her kitchen scraps and buried them in a trench. She said by the next garden season, she had lovely, dark, loose, rich soil. Her...
I did this, and yes, the TP pots were very moldy by the time I planted the plants. But the plants lived.
My understanding about damping off is that it is a fungus (?) in the soil, and the mold on the pot wasn't the cause. I'm not sure about that, so I'm just throwing that out here.
Those who sprout the seeds in paper towel or fabric... how far long do you let them get before you put them in some kind of potting soil? And do you pick them up -- gently! -- with tweezers? I'm thinking of trying this with my saved onion seeds.
We figured that whoever went in there was thinking they'd find a bunch of tools. Nope, we were still digging out raccoon poop!
This is the farmhouse we let the local FD burn down for practice. Nothing worth stealing there now!
I mulched my tomato bed heavily last year. I watered it regularly, after checking to see if the soil was moist. I don't think it was lack of or uneven watering, TBH. I will be very interested in what MSU says about my soil.
This was the old farmhouse we bought through foreclosure. On the day we were able to say, "It's ours," we went out to start cleaning it up. The guy who lost it did not close the door, and critters had been living in it for years. Lots of raccoons, lots of raccoon poop. We went out with a shovel...
I ordered some soil test kits from Michigan State University to test the soil in both my sandy soil and heavy soil gardens, separately, since the soils are so different. Of course, I can't dig any soil up for about 6 weeks yet! :)
MSU is the big ag school here. About 50 years ago, its nickname...
This year, I need to add calcium to my tomato bed. LOTS of blossom end rot last year! Someone suggested gypsum; anyone else have a suggestion?
The egg shells go back to the chickens, so that's not an option. They'll eat the oyster shell, but much prefer the eggshells.
The person most likely to see anything back here? The delivery driver for UPS or FedEx. The mail carrier only comes back to any of us with a package; the mail boxes are 1/4 mile away, where the county stops being responsible for maintenance.
That said, I suspect a mail carrier (not the current...
Chicken compost has DEFINITELY improved my garden! Total game changer for me.
I have a big(ish) pile of compost that is nearly done. Lots of garden waste, kitchen waste, and loads of chicken poop from the daily scooping off the poop board.
This is going on beds as they're emptied and around...
This isn't due to the soil, I'm fairly sure. I've grown tomatoes down there (it's downhill from the house) for many years, and gotten LOADS of cherry tomatoes from huge plants. The chicken poop compost has really helped. Now the plants look great for awhile, then they look like they're going...