Good collection of crops if you live somewhere that has dirt! Nothing but sand here, thus grow bags and pots!!
I guess it depends on whether you own the property, or renting it, If you own your property, then improving the soil can be worth the effort. Improving Sandy Soils - Gardening Australia The Secret to Improving Sandy Soil.
Chell, thanks but I don't have sandy soil, my property is built atop 5 feet of compacted sand with another 8 feet of sand hardpan then you hit the water table as in aquifer. I have attempted to modify the existing beach sand without success and have given up to troughs, grow bags, and posts. Only the native plants love the sand.
Sounds like you would need to truck in a few loads of good soil, maybe pay down a bed of gravel first, and then be extra careful when tilling it after! We do that some times on the ranch, lots of rock and sand, so we drag in dump truck loads to fill in the area so we can grow more productively! I have a 32 foot end dump trailer, and last time we brought in soil, it was three loads, about 60 yards worth!
Thanks for sharing this! When I got my lot here all the trees were dying and when I took a closer look at the dirt I found sand, roots, and crushed lava. Thankfully, I was able to resurrect the the plants and build up the soil. I've had great success with the 18 day Berkely Composting method.
We used EarthBoxes. The initial cost was high, about $32 each 20 years ago. But it was worth it. We experimented by growing the same veggies in the container compared to planted in the ground. This was after a few years of gardening, so we had pretty good soil. The stuff in the containers grew twice as fast. I attribute this to the water reservoir in each container, and the small strip of fertilizer also in each one. The plants could take as much as they wanted, as often as needed. Also, the nutrients remained in the container, and didn't leech off into the ground. I'm sure there are some good diy videos out there that can be built for a fraction of the cost.
@Gray Wolf, above ground grow boxes work well, for the most part. Same advantages as the EarthBoxes, with the soil warming faster than the surrounding ground, and if you keep at it, adding compost every year, the soil underneath just gets more and more enriched, as time goes by. Added bonus, if you're trying to grow something that needs space for a deep tap root, you've got the soil underneath the above ground area, to grow into. Where my house in Texas was (and where I'm at now, in western NY state), the soil is a thin layer of top soil, over yards deep clay, left over from the glacial movement, during the last ice age. Yeah, you can add to it, and eventually have some good growing soil....but that takes time. Much easier to just build boxes the size that work for you. 10 years ago, that was 4' x 8'. Now, with my back, 2' wide is wide enough!!
YA made me look - EarthBoxes WICKING TUB vs GROW BAG vs EARTHBOX - WHICH WORKS BEST - PROS AND CONS - WHAT WILL WORK FOR YOU? - YouTube lots of good choices out there for container planting. The problem here isn't clay - it is subsurface ice.
