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  • From: Ginda Fisher <list@ginda.us>
  • To: NAFEX Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] soil amendment - not really fruit
  • Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:55:06 -0400

Apologies for a soil question regarding my lawn and ornamentals. But you guys know a lot about soil, and perhaps will be kind enough to answer.

I had a patio installed in my yard this summer, and the installers leveled some land and filled with a lot of rock dust. They also compacted a lot of my soil driving the rock dust and equipment up to the back of the yard. So the soil needs some work, especially the stuff that has a lot of compacted rock dust.

They finished by spreading some topsoil (well, sort of) and planting grass. The grass came up pretty much everywhere, but is thin in areas where I suspect the soil it too compacted or is shy on topsoil I also planted some ornamentals (the weeping redbud you guys teased me about and a lot of epimedium) right around the patio. These are already planted (yeah, maybe I should have amended the soil first) and the growing season is coming to a close.

The area is shady, under oaks. It's on top of a hill, and the undisturbed part of my soil is very well drained. Like, we were all astonished at how incredibly dry the soil was when they dug the foundation, and when I fill a hole with water let's just say it's hard to actually "fill" a hole. I marvel at descriptions of waiting an hour for the hole to drain. The native subsoil is mostly a fine yellowish dust interspersed with varying sized chunks of granite. The native topsoil is brown matted oak roots. (only partly kidding.)

The two obvious things I can use to amend my soil are:

* Oak leaves, shredded or whole (I will have a huge crop in a week or two)
* A bag of earthworm castings from "Coast of Maine"*

I also have some compost at the bottom of the pile where I toss the excess leaves every year. It's slightly enriched with vegetable scraps my husband dumps there.

Do you think it would help or hurt the lawn if I spread a thin coat of shredded leaves over the area with poor soil?
How deeply do you think I can mulch the epimedia and red bud with shredded leaves?
Do you think the earthworm casings will help the epimedia and red bud? How much would you spread?
Any other suggestions?

Thanks for any advice.

Ginda Fisher
Eastern MA, zone 6

* I don't think I would have bought these, but to those of you who remember my trouble growing tomatoes in a pot of their soil, this is part of my compensation from them. They delivered replacement potting soil and this bag of earthworm casings by way of apologizing for my being misled by their labeling.





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