Tomatoville® Gardening Forums - Worths purple plants.

Thanks Tom,

Creister,

The area I live in is called the Lost Pines of Bastrop, ‘a left over from the ice age.
It seems a glacier cut through the piney woods of east Texas and left this place stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

The soil is red loamy clay, ‘high in iron, and yes I did dig small holes and fill them in with a sandy loam and composted manure.

The area I planted the tomatoes in was where the previous owners had parked their cars for years. (((Rock hard and full of small round rocks to about 6 inches down.)))
The lady that lived here said she couldn’t get anything to grow, I told her to drive by in a couple of years and I would show her what would grow here.
Now that I think about it I guess I sounded a little conceited.
My neighbor is baffled too as he can’t even get things to grow in his flower beds with so called good dirt.
But then of course he has totally poisoned his soil with all of the crap he puts on his lawn.
It makes me sick to see all of the chemicals he dumps every year.
Then there is the 39,000 gallons of water in one month and he still has the sorriest lawn in the neighborhood.
Well guess what, he has killed all of the good critters in his soil and he uses urea nitrate which won’t break down without the said critters.

Now back to the plants.

One of the reasons I did this in just about the worst place in my yard is to show folks that you don’t have to have raised beds to grow plants in.
Knowing that plants get just about all of there nutrients from the top part of the soil the hole is more a starter hole and water reservoir for the plants.

I will put down composted manure throughout the year for the plants to feed from.
Already the earth worms and other critters are coming back and they will carry the nutrients from the manure to the roots as is in nature.

The rosemary in the back ground was planted last year from cheap $1.50 plants.
I just scratched out a small hole in the ground just big enough to get the little fellers in.
I then hoed out a saucer around the plants and filled it in with compost.
In the ground around all of this rosemary are lots of earth worms that do as I said before.
I bet folks thought they would all die but now I have the fastest growing healthiest rosemary plants around.
They have gotten about 5 times bigger in less than one year.

The trees you see in the back ground are probably rosemary the rest of the trees are cedar elm.
I have a very diverse amount of flora and fauna at my place I probably have around a hundred different kinds of wild plants alone.
The honey mesquite leaves can be chewed for heart burn and the sticky grass plant can be cooked and eaten.
I have a wild toothache bush in the back if you chew the leaves it will make your mouth numb.

There is a test tomato patch in the back that I did nothing but scrape away the horse herb and plant tomatoes there.
They are doing great too.

I just like to take what is at hand and work with it.
A good look at the natural plants and animals around the place will tell volumes about what you need to do.:)

Worth