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the early garden
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here is the bed in the farthest point of the backyard. this used to be where laura parked her horse trailer. there were several scrub bushes that were removed by the landscaper in march 2002. the largish bush to the right is an ancient lilac that we have started to prune heavily. this winter towards next spring we are going to remove 1/3 of the oldest branches to see if we can rejuvenate it and improve its growth habit. it has probably not been pruned since the early 1960's. the soil in this area is the most unbelievable black, good-smelling, crumbly stuff we've ever seen. we don't know too much about gardening and soil but even we could tell that it was really really good while we were working it. we did this bed correctly, by tilling heavily down about eight inches and amending with mushroom and cow manure compost. the plants in this bed were instantly deliriously happy upon being transplanted in from their nursery flats. the area is pretty well-drained but not excessively so. the black topsoil was as deep as we tilled. most of this bed gets 4.5-5 hours of direct, prime-time light per day but some gets dappled shade almost all day. we are interested to see which plants are happy and bloom and which are not and don't. we are sure that we will have to make some species changes for next season based on this summer's results. there is lots of little bluestem, prairie dropseed and indian grass mixed in.
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