i have worms! now can i garden here?

11 years ago

I have two possible shade garden locations, ideally I'd like to do both. One gets either no sun, or very little morning sun. What could I grow with zero sun? Maybe a little later in the season it might get a bit of sun, I am not sure.

My next one is an area around where my treeline is and where it turns to brush. I have lawn, then large trees mxied with invasive vines, and then a ravine. All of this area gets filtered sunlight, but it's late. The area stays cool. I dug into this soil and I found WORMS. it's been 6 years since i have dug a planting hole and found a worm, it was exciting to actually have soil that worms wanted to be in.

I am worried about the second location because of gardening around trees. These are established large trees and they are Pine (not sure the kind but it's the type that gets really tall and starts to only have pine on the top part), Oak trees, and maple trees. There may be others but this is the majority of them, I pull up 50-100 saplings every year of them. When I dug in there were no roots, given how close i went i thought id hit some, would root growth go towards the ravine instead? How close can i get to the trees?

I have japanese honeysuckle and carolina jasmine vining out of control, as well as greenbriar *i think*. These only seem to vine up the trees and we have been working ongetting rid of it but these are well established vines. Will the vines attack ground plants?

and one last question, if i do plant in here and the soil feels nice and i have lots of little worms, how much amending do i need to do.

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Comments (4)

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
11 years ago
oh crikey woman.. dont you have 100 coming in the mail ..

they are hosta.. I WILL YELL...

DIG HOLE.. INSERT.. ROOTS DOWN!!! ... AND THEN TRY TO DROWN THEM FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR ...

and if they dont perform well.. we will move those next year.. or the year after.. or maybe never

glad you are excited about it all.. worms too!!!

but dont let any of this overthinking slow you down ... they are far better off in mother earth.. as compared to.. really .. whats your option with 100 coming????

semper fi

ken

ps: and riddle me this batman.. if your soil has so many worms.. why exactly would you need to amend it???? see above.. re: dig hole, etc .. never amend planting holes under large mature trees.. want to guess where it will grow new roots????? .. especially with all that water you are going to put there ... same with fert ...
hostafreak
11 years ago
Your soil sounds like mine, Earthworms are very good! Go fer it! As far as the wild honeysuckle,and other vines,get rid of what you can. I had the same thing,and it took me awhile before I could plant anything some places,but I haven't been disappointed yet! Phil,in western NC.
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User
11 years ago
Marinewife, a lot of the pines in our part of the country have mostly a big tap root going straight down. Side feeder roots of course, but not the mainstay of the tree.

I imagine the maples are the trees to watch out about planting near. Don't have any myself, except for Japanese maple, and I'm not putting anything in the ground to mess them up. My hosta are container dwellers.

If your spot is a lot damp, has some shade, and some sun, it could work. Find out which way is north. The sunshine will move further north until the first day of summer, so the north side of your house will have a smaller shade pattern each day until then. After that, the sun begins moving back toward the south. It also will come up closer to the real east each day, and the first day of winter, or the shortest day of the year, it will be on the south side of east. That is such a fascinating thing to study about your yard. You can learn the pattern of the sunlight and site your plants perfectly.
Marinewifenc
Original Author
11 years ago
The spot is nice, and never looks dried out, but never looks soaked. That whole area has probably been neglected since the house was built 12 years ago, which is probably why I have nice soil over there, leaves everywhere all the time. it will save me a ton of work if i plant there, every other area of my yard and garden beds is sand or clay.will running a lawn mower on mulch over some piles of winter leaves be ok for mulch over the beds?

Maybe I should identify the maples before I pull them out. My neighbor has 3 Japanese maples directly across from where all these babies are, but I think I have a maple somewhere because of the amount that are showing up.They are about 1-2 ft now, and one 5ft one., normally the vines kill them but I killed the vines first. One is red with red leaves, one is green stem green leaves and then a bunch are red stem green leaves.

Do you have baby ones come up? id love to see if any of mine are baby japanese maples because i would definitely transplant it if it was giong to be anything pretty.

ill have to take pics of a few things that have shown up and maybe head over to the plant identification forum. last year the town cut down a flowering tree or shrub that i really liked and in the spot they cut it down are 5 unknown young shrubs.

i have worms! now can i garden here?

Comments (4)

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5

hostafreak

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i have worms! now can i garden here?

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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5

hostafreak

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