We live on top of a mountain - and there are places in our yard where we have about 2" of thin soil before we literally hit the mountain top - huge boulders, larger than tables. Forget about gardening on those spots - the drainage would be a nightmare and even grass doesn't care to do much besides sprout weakly and turn brown.
But a rocky soil is a mixed blessing. The first garden we made, in front of an old stone wall (and you'd never GUESS where they got the rocks to build that!) was created by attempting to till the existing stuff. I say "attempting" because it didn't take too many tiller blades before my husband decided we should just pry the big ones out and see what we could grow. But I wouldn't have started a garden at all if it hadn't been for the romance of that stone wall.
Some of the first things I planted were teensy little fans of daylilies from Gilbert S. Wild. I am glad they were teensy because it took me nearly half an hour and all of my arm strength to get out enough rockage to plant them. (I was still using the dainty little trowel then - that was before I learned about mattocks.) When the rocks were gone there wasn't any dirt left to cover the little tubers. It boggled me to have to actually go buy and pay for dirt - something my mother has spent her lifetime trying to eradicate - but try gardening without it!
The bright side of this story is that we took all of those rocks, and the ones we'd pried up after the abortive tilling, and created a raised bed garden opposite that wall. Dry rockwalls are not really hard to lay, and with a bit of advanced planning you can grow really terrific things in the pockets between the stones. And then you can fill your raised bed with lovely soil instead of the thin clay that comes with the land - and things will grow - beautifully.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Carol Wallace's Virtual Gardening topic, please visit the Discussions page.