Matress in preparing garden ?

[Ludi]

I am currently putting in my kitchen garden in an area of rocks and clay. I hate to recommend the method I'm finding successful, because it is hard work (at least for me a middle aged woman not too athletic). I'm excavating the clay and rocks down about 18 inches (down to what seems to be bedrock) and replacing the rocks with logs, untreated lumber, some cardboard, old hay, branches, chicken bedding, wool, basically any organic materials I can find. I did half the garden (about 500 square feet) by shovel and pickaxe, which took about a year, until finally my husband took pity on me and rented a small excavator for a weekend to break up the clay and rocks and remove some of it from the garden. I still have to sift out the rocks and excavate some areas with hand tools, but a lot of it went faster than before. I've recently hit a hard patch that made me especially discouraged yesterday (along with some other depressing stuff). Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how the garden is doing now. So if you have a means of excavating out the rocks and a source of logs and other materials, you might consider this. It might be possible to just put the material on the surface very deeply (hugelkultur) if you have soil to cover it with. I would personally avoid carpet or mattress as most of these have a lot of plastic which is very bad for earthworms and other helpful critters.

Hugelkultur: http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

Some photos of my garden in progress:

Some of the rocks placed on the downhill side



Burying wood earlier this year



What that area looks like now

[sweetpea]

Wow, Ludi, holy cow! You should be very proud! I can imagine all the nay-sayers and your own doubts you had in the midst of all that work!! But good for you, you hung in there! 18" down to take out rocks??? Man, you are devoted!! I've been studying that rocks actually attract electricity from lightning and the roots actually like it, so some rocks are helpful, so maybe you can have a break now!

I tried the above-ground hugelkulture with dirt mounded over it and it failed utterly because the voles and mice dug into it, made air tunnels out of it, built their condominiums in it and their population doubled. Then taking it apart again was awful. So I know it is hard to know just how far to take some of these methods we read about.

Great pictures, and what a lovely garden you are building!

[Ludi]

Thank you. I did get some mice but that seems to have calmed down as the material settles and I'm doing a better job of covering it, although I do have a good number of snakes, lizards and frogs.

[eco4560]

Wow! What a neat rock pile! It looks like it would work as a giant swale for you.

[annette]

That looks great Ludi. I'm the same age as you and so I know how hard it is to do that physical work. You leave me in the shade!

[Ludi]

Oh thank you, I'm actually pretty pathetic. If I put in a real good morning gardening I can't do much for the rest of the day...problem is, one is expected to work for money as well as garden....