The Dirt on Gardening

by A barefoot gardener

July 2006

The Rancho deLuxe Garden

Rancho deLuxe Garden (later)

Years ago there lived some folks here who thought that oiling the trees to kill them was a grand idea. This is the summer that these roots and the oil sludge applied by these people can be dug up and then bagged and treated as the sludge/poison that it is.

This is the time to rebuild the soil with horse manure mixed in with some very rich compost that has been cooking for 4 years.

The root sections pictures above show the rot and decay that has been working on these elm tree stumps. Also in the places about the rotting tree corpses were ear wigs, bindweed root clumps, strange and fast ugly wiggly things and that rotting forest smell, save that this was an oil spill.

This soire into the roots was started with the attack on the pig weed surrounding that section of the garden. With the recent rains and deep soaking of the ground, it is easy to now pull the pig weed out by the roots. This disturbs the ground enough that within a week there is a variety of soft grass emerging. Simply pulling the weeds changes the micro-ecology of a few square feet.