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I'm reclaiming a flower bed built 6 years ago. It was a foot of mushroom compost double dug into a foot of red clay under pine trees. A shovel just sinks to the hilt. This may be TOO MUCH drainage as a handful is all grit without a lot of actual soil to "glue" it together..
Woods vines took it over the first spring and that's the only thing that survived. I didn't have a weedeater then, but have a good one now, and I'm not afraid to use it. I pulled out, raked out, all the vines over the last 2 days.
The bed gets 3 hours of late morning/noon sun and then dappled shade and deeper shade the rest of the day. And the bed is 12' deep and 35' left to right with 75yo pine trees over hanging on the west side with baby hardwoods as a sun break between them.
I'm thinking of "planting" in clay chimney flues buried mostly in the bed. They are 8-12" across, and I could weedeat those pesky determined woods vines against them without damaging young plants inside them. Water hoses reach this bed so city water is available as needed.
I'll plant in a landscape mix which is 1/3 aged cow manure, 1/3 mushroom compost, 1/3 red clay. I can add nothing or spagham peat moss or pine bark fines as needed -- have lots and lots of those... I'm thinking the landscape mix alone should be fine since each plant will be elevated in a flue and can't help but drain.
Any thoughts?
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