Diana Still

I have wooded areas in my yard where the ground is covered with virginia creeper, cherry laurel, privet, redbud seedlings, and poison ivy.

What is the best way to remove the invasive stuff? I'm hoping to fill with perennials that we can enjoy. I refuse to use the mainstream sprays.

I have already tried digging the weeds out by hand and it's not sustainable with my available time and energy. Is there something that would help the process go faster than hand-digging but is a better alternative to the chemicals I'm trying to avoid?

If there's already a forum with suggestions for this, feel free to just leave me a link there.

Thanks!

Ralph Sluder wrote:  I pull my much back about a foot because it is pretty thick.  This lets the sun in there good as my rows are east/west. also strong storms can wash the mulch back over the plants.  I do not put soil into the trench.

  Mulch touching young seedling can allow them to rot, they need some airflow around them.

My rows are east/west too. Thank you. My beds aren't wide, so pulling back a foot might be a little much--glad to know it can change based on on thickness of the mulch.

Mike Haasl wrote:If my mulch is an inch or two thick, I pull it aside just enough to plant the seeds.  It will fall back in over time but hopefully the plants are up enough to handle it by then.  

If I'm planting something that needs to be broadcast (cut and come again greens for instance), I'll just rake away all the mulch and put it on another nearby bed

If it was thicker mulch I'd probably make a narrow furrow in it (4-6" wide), fill that up 2" from the top of the mulch with compost and soil and plant into that.  Then not worry about mulch or drag a bit back over the newly added soil once the plants are growing.

Thanks! The specifics on mulch thickness are really helpful.

Michael, Thanks! Glad I'm not the only new one here. Why do you keep the mulch from touching the plant? So that the roots and stem can breathe?

Ralph, Awesome, the foot wide trench is a helpful note. Do you fill it with soil too? Where do you get the soil? It seems like a lot of extra soil to get every year.

I do mostly seedlings too, but the peas seem to do a lot better if I direct seed them.

Note: I'm a hobby gardener who leans toward trying to do things in a sustainable, organic way. I'm not deep into permaculture practice but love the idea. If something here is heretical, don't judge but I'd love to learn!

Over the last 4 years I've been trying to change my thick, soupy, sponge of gumbo dirt into something that resembles soil. I read Diane Miessler's book Grow Your Soil and so now I have a nice thick layer of mulch on top of all my garden beds and I'm planning not to till or turn over the dirt anymore--just add amendments as I plant. The soil underneath looks spectacular compared to even last year!

Question: now that I have my nice mulch layer in place, how do I plant seeds into that? Specifically pea seeds: snow peas and garden peas. Do I pull the mulch away and plant at soil level? Planting directly into the mulch doesn't seem like it would work very well. But the mulch layer is so thick it seems like it would shade the tiny sprouts coming up.

I think I've seen a forum on here about this before but opinions were divided. If there's a good one that you can link to that already exists, I'd love to see that too.

Thank you!

RedHawk, I guess I was thinking the wood would soak up the water instead of the dirt soaking up the water. But maybe a better solution would be to try to improve drainage in the area. Thanks!

Michelle, I will see what I can do! I don't want to build them too high.

Dennis, thanks! I will be keeping my eye out.

Dennis--you may be on to something! So is karst topography where the groundwater actually dissolves stuff away and then the groundwater shows up in places where it didn't used to be? How do I know if this is my area--does it show up on topographical maps? We're in southeast Decatur--lived in north Huntsville for quite awhile and the dirt is pretty different at this house.

Thank you! I will look into this. A local friend has mentioned underground streams too.

Bryant RedHawk, I think 'swamp' is a great description! It seems like an odd place to have a swamp, since we are up on one of the higher hills around here. But the dirt sure acts like it.

Anaerobic conditions sounds right too, but I didn't really think of that. There is a definite smell to the dirt sometimes--like the smell you get when you dig down into beach sand and you get a fishy/salty smell.

Thanks for confirming that it's probably the dirt and not the sun. It all seems to add up.

Would it work to do a hügelkultur mound in the beds? Maybe dig out some of the yuck dirt that's there, add wood, and I guess I'd have to get topsoil from somewhere to add to the mound?

This is my third year of planting a vegetable garden in this location in North AL. The soil is very unusual--it holds onto so much water but crumbles into fine sand if a dry clump is smashed with a trowel. It's not typical red clay--it's very dark and playdoh-like when wet, but whitish when dry.

During spring rains, if I dig a hole, water pours into it from the sides like a well filling up. I dug 3 trenches and bucketed out over 100 gallons this spring before connecting the trenches into a river that drained downhill from the garden. The lawn also stays so boggy in places that it's impossible to mow completely with a riding mower until June.

I've had increasing trouble with production from the veggie plants. They grow slowly and eventually do produce fruit, but it's not abundant. Foliage is there but doesn't seem especially lush. I planted 15 cucumber plants and have had 3 or 4 cucumbers so far this year. One tomato is ripening (it's late July) out of 20+ plants. Even green beans this year, out of probably 8-10 plants, I would get 7 green beans at a time. Potatoes and onions rot in the soil unless I put them just the right place. Everything just seems stagnant.

The garden does not get full sun for the entire day, but does get pretty direct sun from about 10 am till 2 or 3 pm in midsummer and then some tall oaks filter it after that. I might call it partial shade, but it's not like there's a solid house shadow over it, and the tree branches aren't directly over the garden.

The plants that have done okay are zinnias, bell peppers, jalapenos, okra, mint, and basil. I got a few bok choy plants to grow decently this year. Plants that have done poorly are tomatoes (low yield), radishes (they don't expand into radishes), arugula, spinach, green beans, parsley, cilantro, zucchini. I did start most of these from seed myself. Is there any link between what has done badly that would help me pinpoint a problem? I feel like it's probably either lack of sun or soggy soil, but I'm not sure which one to work on.

We have used cinder blocks to make three long, narrow beds in our garden area, so the planting areas are slightly raised. The soil in the beds has been amended somewhat with some bagged garden soil/topsoil, some compost, Black Kow manure, etc. I covered each bed with oak leaves in January last year and dug them all into the beds in March. But still, after the intense rains from Barry this last week or so, there's standing water all through the beds and the paths between the beds are practically solid puddles. One place I stepped on some dirt and water actually squirted out and started running downhill!

Would making a hügelkultur mound in each of my cinder block beds be a way to help mitigate the sogginess without trucking in probably literal tons of topsoil? I'm not anxious to spend hundreds of dollars on what amounts to a hobby garden.  We already had to do that for a fence to keep deer out.

I've been gardening for 10 years now; the 7 years in our other location had typical southeast red clay and my gardens really grew fine there. But here I feel like I've lost my green thumb--is this possible?! ;)