Accidental bed with shallow dirt

I have an accidental bed, had to do with mowing and.... you know how it goes. I made an arc the mower can navigate, told it it was a new bed, and dug it a bit, planted some stuff. It did... tolerable. Sort of. I am digging it more, about to amend the soil, and realized there's an old path or something down there, tightly packed matching about 1.5 inch rocks. Well. That explains a lot.

After amending, it'll have about 6 inches of soil at the shallowest part, gets more shade than I'd like but still at least 4 solid hours of sun. It's in bunny territory, and I don't want to fence it (would make mowing harder again, and just negate the reason for having it.)

What do I want to plant there? Shallow soil, bunnies, part shade.  I'm thinking small alliums like bunching onions and garlic. Some flowers would be nice, any suggestions? I do have some irises that need splitting, or a LOT of seeds for all kinds of things, mostly rowdy annuals.

Zone 6 A/B, so I theoretically have about 120 growing days, but that's been VERY theoretical the last couple of years, with early and late freezes and flooding.

Suggestions?
Thank you!
:D

My concern is whether the rocks are so hard packed that the plant roots can't get down, and the water will run off to fast. Do you have something spike-like that you can hammer in, loosen, and get back out so you turn the rocks into a version of a sieve?

Jay Angler wrote:My concern is whether the rocks are so hard packed that the plant roots can't get down, and the water will run off to fast. Do you have something spike-like that you can hammer in, loosen, and get back out so you turn the rocks into a version of a sieve?

The rock layer is past getting roots into, yes. Or at least not much.
I removed a pile of them when I made it. It's one of two beds in a line, the other one gets better light, and I did it first, and got the rocks out more. Took I think about 10 gallons of rocks out of that about 5 foot wide by 7 foot long bed.

As to doing more to this one, honestly, I don't have time or energy. I have more important beds that DO work well that need a lot of work before spring, my fall work never got done, and that one is very low priority. I checked while I was working, it's about 5 foot wide, about 4 feet long from base to top curve of the D .... the rock layer is under one edge, about 12-18 inches of the width of the bed is rocky.

I'm going with "this bed has shallow soil" and running with that. Just a matter of what to put there. Small alliums are still a pretty easy choice, wondering if there's any better ideas.

In this part of the world, there is a lot of soil with solid bedrock at 4-6 inches down. I know someone who chipped holes in the bedrock to put his fruit trees in, as he didn't check the soil before buying. I have exposed bedrock on my property, that wants to have soil built up on it. So it's good education for me to learn how to deal with it.  :D