growing in the ground and soil requirements
Peter Taggart (Tue, 17 Jul 2012 14:27:21 PDT)
Smaller mice would get through 1/2" mesh here.
Many winter growing species do not like to be so dry, with there being both
a negligable summer rain fall and the beds raised and in full sun you may
find some plants prefer to be moister or shaded, -the "indicator" dicots
are fairly drought resistant ones.'Bulbs' do tend to pull themselves to a
depth where the moisture is to their liking though.
Unless you plan to create a 'peat bed' or 'high humus bed' which might grow
many lovely plants such as Anemonella, Crocus banaticus, Iris
winowgradowii, Trilliums, Lillies, 50% humus is very high for ground grown
plants. Probably good for the summer growers though. Small volumes of soil
dry out which is why humus is important in pots.
My mix you refer to for growing bulbs in pots was 50% AGGREGATE (sand and
grit) to 50% soil, and to which I add organic material for various plants.
Peter (UK)
On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 9:03 PM, Gastil <marygastil@yahoo.com> wrote:
"What size are the animals you hope to exclude with the wire mesh?"
Luckily there is no evidence of rats nor mice, likely thanks to the
neighbor cats.
Rain is rare here in summer. Average monthly rain in mm in Santa Barbara
is less than
5 mm in each of June-July-August. Yet the soil:///sand:compost/ mix in my
older boxes supports
volunteer dicots into July with no water such as Linum, Linaria and
Anagalis which I expect put
down deep roots last winter. Someone mentioned on this list the use of
non-bulb plants
more sensitive to moisture as an indicator so I left a few "weeds" for
that purpose.
These show no wilt so I expect the soil mix is still holding some
moisture.
Does the 50:50 organic to mineral recommendation for potted growing media
apply to growing in the ground? My intuition tells me to use a higher
proportion of organic material in-ground
than in a pot. Is that what you are recommending?