Building a tiered garden...help!

[Wino]

https://www.google.com/search?q=wiping+ ... e&ie=UTF-8

[senorgrand]

Contact the rteal experts on tiered/terraced gardens:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ifugao+ ... e&ie=UTF-8

LOl...I'd be arrested by the water police if I tried to grow rice here.

[senorgrand]

I'm wondering if I should just order organic fertilizer now...money's getting tight

[YankeeTarheel]

I'm wondering if I should just order organic fertilizer now...money's getting tight

Know anyone with a horse or cow?

[highdesert]

You're in good company SG.

After an economic week so bleak, with thousands out of work and businesses teetering on the edge, a happy little miracle has happened in the world of plants. People are clamoring to plant vegetable gardens, and Southern California nurseries — deemed an essential service by state and local officials — have found creative ways to meet the demand while keeping customers and staff at a safe distance amid coronavirus concerns.

Multiple nurseries in Southern California are now offering online or phone orders for customers skittish about coming inside. Customers can pick up their orders in business parking lots and some nurseries are even delivering orders to homes. The home-based, organic Two Dog Nursery near the Miracle Mile in Mid-Wilshire is only doing online orders, but the requests are coming in so thick and fast they can hardly keep up.

The nursery sets appointments about 48 hours out for customers to pick up their plants, said owner Jo Anne Trigo.

“It’s the rebirth of the victory garden” she said. “We’re doing 50 orders a day; every time I walk in the house to get a drink of water there are six more orders to print. But we’re laying down the law now; we’re all in masks and we’re not letting anyone in. And for the sake of time and our backs, we’re not loading orders into cars anymore. We just leave them on the curb.”

“We’re seeing this as a resurgence in victory gardens,” she said. “There are so many unknowns now, we’re encouraging people to start planting their own backyard garden to have a sustainable food supply. Gardening really does reduce anxiety and stress, and what would the drawbacks be? That you have too many strawberries or tomatoes and you have to share with friends? There’s not really a downside to this.”

Gardeners are also looking for flowers and houseplants, perhaps to help keep their spirits up inside, said Rezvan, as well as soil and plants that attract butterflies and bees.

“What we’re saying now is, ‘Create your happy place, plant a garden,’” she said. “Nature brings happiness to everyone’s lives, so you can nurture yourself while nurturing your plants.”

https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story ... ry-gardens

[CDFingers]

Just to dangle the carrot a bit for you, yesterday I spent some time with the hoe and the rake out back in the vegetable garden. Most enjoyable.

CDFingers

[Marlene]

Don’t spend all your money obsessing on a project. That’s too easy to do as stress relief.

[lurker]

i've little patches of flowers scattered around the yard. so rather than just mow them, i'm digging the patches up 1 by 1, moving them to the base of one of our trees and using them to fill in among the tree roots where it's impractical to mow anyway. then i go back and fill in the holes with topsoil. at some point i'll go over the newly-made bare spots with grass seed. i spent a couple of hours at it saturday, took sunday off and may get back to it today if the weather improves.

[kronkmusic]

i've little patches of flowers scattered around the yard. so rather than just mow them, i'm digging the patches up 1 by 1, moving them to the base of one of our trees and using them to fill in among the tree roots where it's impractical to mow anyway. then i go back and fill in the holes with topsoil. at some point i'll go over the newly-made bare spots with grass seed. i spent a couple of hours at it saturday, took sunday off and may get back to it today if the weather improves.

I don't know enough about this to say for sure, but my cousin is a landscape designer and he said a lot of trees don't like other plants growing in their "root initiation zones," meaning depending on the size of the tree, the first foot or couple of feet around the trunk. Again, I'm no abrorer, but you might wanna look into that.

[lurker]

could be, i'm just doing what i'm told by swmbo. there's grass and "weeds" among and around the roots, but it's patchy.

[senorgrand]

Ok, I did an elevation drawing of the tiers after staking and stringing the slope.

One 2' wall gets me two 3' tiers. Plus the tier below, which is also 3'. That gets me almost 400 sq ft of garden. Since I'm not canning, I can't imagine needing more than that.

I am also leaning towards Golden Goddess bamboo for the screen. It's not invasive, doesn't grow too big, is drought tolerant once established and should grow well in my climate. Also, it's gorgeous.

I'm going to finish staking the slope this weekend and make room for my dirt I'm displacing. Local growing mulch is $40 a yard, so I'll mix 50-50 with topsoil and add organic fertilizer. I'll also use pea gravel for the base of of the wall and some of the backfill for the top tier.

I'll be using gopher screen and some cardboard to try and keep the pea gravel from mixing with the garden soil while I layer it in. Once in place, the cardboard should rot and provide good drainage between the different layers.

The tiers will feature 12" of garden soil, but there is more than 3' of good soil beneath that.

Thoughts?

[geno]

I'd echo Marlene's post, and add that probably 80% of vegetable roots are in the 8 OR 10 inches of soil.
If I pull a corn stalk up by the roots, a seven foot plant has a root ball less than 12" tall.

[kronkmusic]

I'd echo Marlene's post, and add that probably 80% of vegetable roots are in the 8 OR 10 inches of soil.
If I pull a corn stalk up by the roots, a seven foot plant has a root ball less than 12" tall.

Definitely. The biggest and healthiest kale, collards, tomatoes, cucumbers, and "other things" I've grown were all in ~12" of soil. Beds don't need to be multiple feet deep, there's no oxygen down there, without oxygen there is no fungus, without fungus roots cannot exchange sugars for nutrients, so there's simply no reason for them to grow roots that deep. I've seen giant 40' mango and mahogany trees ripped out of saturated ground by hurricane winds and the roots weren't much more than 12" deep.

[highdesert]

I've seen giant 40' mango and mahogany trees ripped out of saturated ground by hurricane winds and the roots weren't much more than 12" deep.

Palm trees are the same, the root ball isn't that large compared to their height.

[CDFingers]

Sounds good, 400 square feet. We really like chard. Hardy and colorful.

CDFiingers

[senorgrand]

Whelp, woke-up at 5:30 this morning and worked on this. I have the green-light for Phase 1. Working on Phase 2.

Phase 3 won't likely begin for another month or so.

[CDFingers]

You can still get snow peas in, as you're close to the coast, depending on how knavely you whip the teens. I'm going for beans after the snow peas.

CDFingers

[senorgrand]

Not sure about that...it was 30 degrees last night...

[geno]

Try this site to find what zone your in:
https://garden.org/nga/zipzone/

Damn we're now 8b! We use to be 6b.

[senorgrand]

Thanks! 9a

[CDFingers]

We're zones 7-9. What's brutal for us is the boiling summers. If you water every day you're OK. Miss one and you're desiccated. Ask me how I know. SLO has lots of inherent moisture, as I recall.

CDFingers

[senorgrand]

Currently hailing here.

My first set of seeds came today! Great variety.

I've also got to work on the dog run on the other side of the house before I can start on this side. I'll need to replace the dirt with decomposed granite. My local quarry is still delivering.

Everything for Phase One will be here by next weekend. That should keep the family busy for awhile!

I'll work on Phase Two in a couple of weeks. Probably won't get to Phase Three until sometime in May. Luckily, we can grow tomatoes through October.

[senorgrand]

We're zones 7-9. What's brutal for us is the boiling summers. If you water every day you're OK. Miss one and you're desiccated. Ask me how I know. SLO has lots of inherent moisture, as I recall.

CDFingers

Yeah, we have moisture, but our high's and low's are about +/- 15 degrees from SLO. Your garden can get baked pretty good when we pass triple-digits.

[senorgrand]

OK, got approval from my better half on a revised garden plan, but she won't let me pull the two small trees, so I had to scale back my plans.

[senorgrand]

Anyone have a good online garden planner?