Hey ssmd, Boy, its all here. Posts with opinions from everyone. Observations from my chair - adding sand to clay soils is labor intensive, not necessary and further, by itself doesn't work. Humus, Humus, Humus - Mycorrhizae, Mycorrhizae, Mycorrhizae - soil test, soil test, soil test. Products - Soil Secrets Terrapro, 94% REAL HUMUS + helper bacteria and mycorrhizae. Protein Crumblies, balanced food for the Terrapro helper bacteria. Liquid Earth Nectar and Earth Ambrosia once a month during the growing season, which gave more humus and biologics. All wild plants (I hate the term weeds) were pulled and dropped creating my own mulch. That has been my program for my 2010 and 2011 start up gardens on two separate locations here in Cochise, Arizona. I put these materials on top on my ph 8.8 and ph 7.3 concrete soils, watered them in, shallow planted and applied a 1" mulch. I did no tillage of any kind and no raised beds! All beds were at ground level. Virtually all of the foods grown had flavor that I can't remember tasting in any of my gardens since 1977. Some were close, but not as good. In 2010 a professional documentary film crew spent a day in the garden and we shot a how to and demonstration film titled, "The Double Victory Garden". You can get it on the web but I decided not to market it myself because it did have some minor errors that I wanted to correct. I am anal about these things. The 94% humus (confirmed by lab analysis) in Terrapro primes the soil pump providing a powerful negative charged energy field which attracts and holds the positive charged nutrients, Ca, Mg, K. etc. mentioned in the "Soil test - Why do it? and the Humus (OOW) threads". One molecule of "Supramolecular" Humus can attract and hold for plant use over 10,000 water molecules! The negative charge (CEC)of sand(least), silt (more), and clay (most) on the CEC (Cation Exchange Capacity) scale rarely is over 30. Compost generally runs 25 to 75 (if well made) and Supramolecular Humus is up to 250! The compost provides slow steady release plant food and that is its value. It only provides a max of 5% humus, that is what the new research proves. If you doubt this, have your compost tested and I don't mean an organic matter test, I mean a HUMUS test! The more alkaline the soil is, the higher the CEC of the humus - No need to try to change the ph, the humus adjusts to it whatever it is. Humus is the great fixer - It adds body to sandy soils and with Ca and Mg will aggregate and open up heavy clay soils so they can breathe. Universal fix-all! Nature can make ideal soil as mentioned but we have to provide the right inputs. When I started, I had to stand on my soil probe to get in an inch. 3 months into the season I could sink it in over a foot but this was in the beds which had received drip irrigation. A month ago when the soil in the beds was dry, the probe still easily went in over a foot! That impressed me. Jon, awesome garden! It obviously reflects your dedication and your hard work. I am not a market gardener, I am a researcher, experimenter and grow for the family I live with though I have sold some excess. Please visit my website, thedoublevictorygarden.com and Soilsecrets.com for the full story. On my site I have a before and after soil analysis for the 2011 garden. You might want to take a look. Blessings to us all.

ibuzzard - yes, constantly adding organic matter after harvest before the next crop. To speed things up bring in a lot of organic matter as manure + bedding to compost in piles set aside from the current gardening beds. Then after harvest rake those on to the beds if you let some lay fallow or put what is crumbling & dark brown on beds you plan to replant right away. It takes awhile to build enough compost to cover all the beds at all times, but with diligence you can do it. The small animal manures like chicken & rabbits are potent, but not the quantity you'd need. Get a hold of some horse manures and you'll be able to speed up the process. Ten years of using chicken, duck & rabbit manures from our backyard animals (Plus liberal amounts of used coffee grounds + shredded leaves mown over on the lawn in fall. Plus our kitchen waste compost bin contents.)... didn't up the soil organic matter content as much as when we started adding horse manure as well composting first in piles or spreading in fall on fallow beds. Volume made a huge difference though I was quite skeptical in the beginning, afraid of weeds & then learned about the herbicide residue in some hay fed to livestock. I made sure we used manure from horses fed alfalfa hay instead. Now after at least 3 years of horse manures we no longer need 6-12 inches of it added in the fall to break down. The soil is light, fluffy and diggable with hands rather than pickaxe like before.

This is still a very healthy looking shrub! Which variety(ies) of hydrangea did you get? If some stems will be on the ground: once planted, just put up a 1' high section of rubber coated wire fence (green or black) around the plant to hold them up at a desired angle (up to 45 degrees). Then if you wish, trim the stems down (after flowers are spent) to the next healthy set of buds (at the nodes where the leafs attach to the stems). The green stems should get thicker and gradually position themselves toward sunlight. New stems the following year should grow straight up and not become floppy until the blooms occur again. Aside from all that, you can just leave the fence there indefinitely; it will help hold future blooms off the ground so they don't get "stuck in the mud".

Thank you Gardengal48, I didn't argue with that. I just trying to say this is not the only way of how plants survive. There are different conditions and different species and different adaptation technics . http://www.saps.org.uk/secondary/news-and-research/1267-how-plants-can-suck-water-from-the-sky "But recent research has shown that our traditional understanding of the movement of water through plants is incomplete. Under certain specialised conditions, some plants have evolved the ability to absorb water through their leaves, move it down the xylem, and them release it into the soil. The plants are actually watering their own roots - and their own seedlings. This off-beat mechanism for water uptake works well enough that these plants can continue to photosynthesise and grow, even when the soil they are growing in are dry. The trees the researchers studied - Drimys brasiliensis - grow in the cloud forests of Brazil, where the trees are almost constantly covered in fog. The atmosphere around the leaves has a higher water potential than the leaves themselves, allowing foliar water uptake. The exact pathway for water entry is still under discussion: this particular species has a hydrophilic cuticle that could facilitate water entry, as well as hydrophilic tissues within the leaf that could provide water storage. At least 70 species, across seven different ecosystems, have been identified as using this 'back-to-front' water transport mechanism, pulling water out of the sky and down to the rhizosphere. These new findings have important implications for our existing models of the climate and our ecosystems, which often consider soil water as the only source of water for plants. It's another example of how plants are constantly over-turning our expectations. "