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Tracy Wandling 's Profile
Tracy Wandling
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Joined:
08/05/2015
Last Updated:
03/11/2015
Location:
Mansons Landing, Canada
Climate Zone:
Cool Temperate
Gender:
Female
Web site:
www.tracywandling.com





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(projects i'm involved in)


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Andrea Walker Mike Mubaya Nathan Dow
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The garden!

Posted by Tracy Wandling over 8 years ago

Okay, it looks like I can only upload one image at a time? That's what happened last time I was here. Very frustrating.

Anyway . . .

We built the garden beds in 4' deep trenches, about 4' wide, and filled them with wood (mostly alder in varying stages of decay), grass, sand, year-old broom chips, year-old grass/leaves/weeds mixed with some sand and a bit of clay. The plants are thrilled so far. No bug pressures yet - I figure it'll take them a while to find the garden. :) And it's a slow slug year, so haven't had any problems with them yet, either.

The reason we went with the buried wood beds is because we don't acually have any soil. Just sand. And rocks. And some more sand. So the wood beds made sense. But I didn't want them above ground, as we generally get very hot dry summers. So, we'll see how that all works out. So far so good!

I don't know how to test the soil in the beds, as there really isn't any 'soil' in them, other than what went in with the transplants - handful or two that got thrown in when transplanting. It's basically a 2-3' thick bed of mulch on top. There are worms in there - happy to see THAT - and I have top dressed with some compost, but basically, yeah, mulch. And a very alive and sweet smelling mulch it is - lots of mycelium, bugs, worms, and such. I'm curious to know when this mulch can be rightly called soil, and be 'tested' as such. Interesting to ponder . . .

It's been a very rainy June, and the beds are staying nice and moist. Looking forward to seeing how they do in the hot days of summer. But in the mean time, they're soaking up lots of water, so they should make it through the hot times ahead well. That's the plan, anyway. I'll let ya know how it goes. :)

I'll come back with a more detailed write up, and some more photos, once I figure out what size images can be uploaded here. 

Cheers

Tracy

June19

Comments (1)

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Nathan Dow
Nathan Dow : Hey Tracy, I just wanted to share a tip about posting images. I find that www.Imgur.com is a better host for pictures than the native picture system that Permaculture Global uses. Upload your pictures to Imgur, then use the "Add Picture" button to put pictures anywhere in your post using the Imgur direct link address (should appear in the top right corner of your pictures on Imgur). Hope that helps. You can see an example on my latest project update.

Good luck with your new garden. Are you planning on adding supplemental nitrogen? From what I understand, N will be tied up in the soil as woody material breaks down.
Posted over 8 years ago

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