Indeed Jean I did let things get seriously out of hand. ;) As I said at the beginning, I am guilty of neglect for sure. I had stopped watering mostly as all the plants were done for the season and I just didn't have the chance to pull everything out until yesterday. I'm in SoCal and our hot dry fall made for the perfect storm of stressed plants and environmental conditions. It also never rains here and never freezes - so nothing to "reset" the system, or keep populations manageable. This was almost a science experiment. If it hadn't been a terrible accident. ;) Like I said, I wasn't trying to save the plants, so I did exactly what you said Ken right away. Thus getting covered in mites. (shudder). See picture for what it looks like now. There is about 24" of space between the wall and the trellis. It's not the wall's fault tho - plants were fine this summer except for a couple of scorching days. And Jean, I know they don't *really* live in the soil - but so many fell off the plants as I cut them down I guess I was wondering what to do about remaining populations. For instance, if I plant peas right now I don't think they'll have a chance. ?? Ken you think let it lay fallow till spring? What about a cover crop? I hate to leave it "naked" and clover maybe would provide some benefits to the soil? Here in LA winter is my season for kale, lettuce, peas, beets, carrots etc....but the weather has been so terrible for pests (I had terrible powdery mildew as well) I'm wondering if the soil should take a break....

I think you guys are both way off the mark, and Glib is setting himself up for a soggy soil that will collapse quickly and some intense N immobilization with the addition of materials that break down rapidly, not to mention the extra heat associated with rapid composting. When you think of container media, think STRUCTURE. Forget about the soil's ability to feed the plants (that's monkey easy) and focus on it's ability to hold the right amount of water and air. Compost can't do that. No matter what you THINK, using a large compost fraction (or any other fine material like peat, coir, sand, topsoil ----- is going to provide you with a soil that retains a soggy layer at the bottom after a thorough watering. This is what you DO NOT want, because water/nutrient uptake is an energy driven process that requires fuel (photosynthate) fuel to be burned in the presence of O2. W/o the O2, there is no way to drive the process and the plant suffers for as long as the O2 level in the soil is insufficient. Ideally, you would BASE your soil on a very larger fraction of coarse material that retains it's structure for long periods (is mineral in composition or breaks down very slowly - like pine bark). This coarse material would comprise more than 75-85% of the volume of the medium. You could then add a small fraction of compost, peat, or a mineral like Turface to adjust the water retention to a favorable level. Adding coarse material to "amend" finer material doesn't work because the fine material simply fills all the air space between the large particles, leaving you with the same drainage, aeration, and soggy soil level you would have had using only the fine material. The idea is to create a soil that holds all or most of it's water inside of soil particles - on the surface of soil particles - and at the interface where soil particles contact each other, and none or little of its water between soil particles. That's not achievable using compost, peat, coir ....... Al

In my estimation, the only convincing case to be made for reusing container soils is one of economics, and you'll never find me argue against making that decision. If you can't afford, you can't afford it. That said and setting economics aside, you might decide to reuse soil for reasons other than economical. Perhaps the effort involved with acquiring (or making your own) soil is something you might not wish to go through or be bothered with. In any case, it would be difficult to show that soils in a more advanced state of structural collapse can somehow be preferred to a soil that can be counted on to maintain its structure for the entire growth cycle. So, if the economic aspect is set aside, at some point you must decide that "my used soil is good enough" and that you're willing to accept whatever the results of that decision are. All soils are not created equal. The soils I grow in are usually pine bark based & collapse structurally at a much slower rate that peat based soils, yet I usually choose to turn them into the garden or give them over to a compost pile where they serve a better purpose than as a container soil after a year of service. Some plantings (like woody materials and some perennials) do pretty well the second year in the same bark-based soil, and with careful watering, I'm usually able to get them through a third year w/o root issues. Watering habits are an extremely important part of container gardening. Well structured soils that drain well are much more forgiving and certainly favor success on the part of the more inexperienced gardeners. As soils age, water retention increases and growing becomes increasingly difficult. If your (any one's) excellence in watering skills allows you to grow in an aging medium, or if your decision that "good enough" is good enough for you, then it's (your decision) is good enough for me, too. The phrases "it works for me" or "I've done it this way for years w/o problems" is often offered up as good reason to continue the status quo, but there's not much substance there. I'm being called away now, but I'll leave with something I offered in reply on a recent thread: "... First, plants really aren't particular about what soil is made of. As long as you're willing to stand over your plant & water every 10 minutes, you can grow most plants perfectly well in a bucket of marbles. Mix a little of the proper fertilizers in the water & you're good to go. The plant has all it needs - water, nutrients, air in the root zone, and something to hold it in place. So, if we can grow in marbles, how can a soil fail? Our growing skills fail us more often than our soils fail. We often lack the experience or knowledge to recognize the shortcomings of our soils and to adjust for them. The lower our experience/knowledge levels are, the more nearly perfect should be the soils we grow in, but this is a catch 22 situation because hidden in the inexperience is the inability to even recognize differences between good and bad soil(s). Container soils fail when their structure fails. When we select soils with components that break down quickly or that are so small they find their way into and clog macro-pores, we begin our growing attempts under a handicap. I see anecdotes about reusing soils, even recommendations to do it all over these forums. I don't argue with the practice, but I (very) rarely do it, even when growing flowery annuals, meant only for a single season. Soils don't break down at an even rate. If you assign a soil a life of two years and imagine that the soil goes from perfect to unusable in that time, it's likely it would be fine for the first year, lose about 25% of its suitability in the first half of the second year, and lose the other 75% in the last half of the second year. This is an approximation & is only meant to illustrate the exponential rate at which soils collapse. Soils that are suitable for only a growing season show a similar rate of decline, but at an accelerated rate. When a used soil is mixed with fresh soil after a growing season, the old soil particles are in or about to begin a period of accelerated decay. I choose to turn them into the garden or they find their way to a compost pile. Unless the reasons are economical, I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would add garden soils to container soils. It destroys aeration and usually causes soils to retain too much water for too long. Sand (unless approaching the size of BB's), has the same effect. I don't use compost in soils because of the negative effect on aeration/drainage. The small amount of micro-nutrients provided by compost can be more efficiently added, organically or inorganically, via other vehicles. To boil this all down, a container medium fails when the inverse relationship between aeration/drainage goes awry. When aeration is reduced, soggy soil is the result, and trouble is in the making. Al

You have an admirable goal, but I am another soul that wants to weigh in on the side of caution as far as perhaps getting into a project that's potentially unmanageable. So I have a bunch of questions and comments as well as some links to add to what others have said. Can you get a group of volunteers to meet and help on a regular basis in maintaining this? I know the Peterborough NH parks' gardens are all volunteer maintained, but they meet once a week in the early morning for a few hours and there are several in the group. The man who is the designer and organizes the crew has a list of specific tasks each week. Here's a link to the part of his blog that discusses the setup of what he calls a public-private partnership, so the gardens were installed by the town dept. of public works, but are maintained by volunteers about whose work he occasionally writes. You can also click on each garden on the right side of the page for more info. His are more traditional looking gardens that what you are envisioning, but both need maintenance. One of his most useful pieces of advice to my mind is "Design only what you can maintain at the highest level. Long-term maintenance is the key." Are you interested in only native New England plants? It seems as though you want to include them, but also some hardy, low-care non-native perennials (Russian sage.) By nature, New England is naturally a forest, so does your goal include woody plants such as trees and shrubs? If not, you will have considerably more work removing woody plants that will try to move in courtesy of the natural ways plants seed themselves into new territory. The books of William Cullina (former director of the New England Wild Flower Society (NEWFS) and current director of the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden) will be of help in finding natives that suit your situation as will the many resources of the NEWFS. Because that is a cut bank, it is subsoil and not all plants will be happy there with low nutrients and fast drainage, so keep that in mind when choosing plants. You might want to get a soil test done. The area at the top will be much drier than that at the bottom, so plan and plant accordingly. Michael Gordon of Gardener's Eye says, "Prepare soil properly from the onset" which in your case (since you can't dig other than to plant on that slope) may include adding some slow release fertilizer, some compost and as Thyme2dig says above, mulch, lots of mulch. Mulch in the short term will discourage weed seeds from germinating and help maintain even moisture, and long term will add to the soil fertility. I would recommend either curls from a wood turner or chips from a tree service or the crews that maintain the local power lines since both will break down well and until them be more stable on the slope than some other mulch options, and either is free. Have you got the support of whomever does the maintenance for the rest of the property as well the administration? For instance, many of the plants you will want to use are spreaders, either by seed or by runners. If they seed over into the lawn in your photo, will that cause issues? As an example, my back field (quite nutrient poor, sandy acid loam on a very slight slope) has two of the grasses mentioned in the meadow kit from the NEWFS, Eragrostis spectabilis (purple lovegrass) and Schizachrium scoparium (little bluestem). Both are happy in the poor soil, generally low maintenance (the field gets mowed twice a year) and gorgeous in fall. In this photo the lovegrass is the broad swath of red-purple and the little bluestem is the darker, taller grass that shows in a couple of clumps near the edges of the lovegrass. Here's a photo of little bluestem from closer up taken on my way home today. As perhaps you can tell, it is growing in the sandy area along the edge of the road, so it's fine with poor soil. This is just the wild type, but you can also get named varieties that have more of the bluish tones or more of the reddish tones. I think it's really attractive. However, the lovegrass's seedheads behave like tumbleweed, shedding seed as they move, so I find lovegrass in the gravel drive, the veggie garden, etc. Another issue might be the maintenance crew weed whacking your garden, not realizing that it was a deliberate planting. I once had someone hedge prune a lovely shrub to a sheared blob in a public garden I had planted. Is there a water source to get plants established, either hoses from the school or a tank on a truck? All new plantings will be more successful if you can water them when rainfall isn't adequate. I don't want to discourage you, but setting realistic goals will be the key to your success. If there is a local garden club or other group that can be persuaded to see your vision and help consistently , all the better. Steps in order: -Figure out what's there, what can stay (I think I see a few shrubby white pines, for instance) and what to remove. -Create a design (including a plant list) that can be implemented in stages while still maintaining what has already been planted. -With whatever help you have available, implement the first stage. To give a sense of scale, a few years ago, I put in a large mixed perennial and shrub border that's probably 70'x15', working on my own, but with a tractor at my disposal, and the area had already been cleared. It took me 3 full seasons to plant: the first year doing prep, woody plants, and mulching for the first chunk; the second year adding perennials and adding another 15'x15' piece and the third year planting the additional piece and replacing plants that didn't do well from the first two seasons. So take creating it in chunks, but plan the whole thing before your start.