I started digging up the pathways...have to pull the path rocks to get to
the weed fabric. It is ghastly weird underneath...I have hard paced clay
soil (if you can call it that) and there are huge cracks, really big under
it which I suppose is due to the drying out of the clay. I can't get a
shovel through it at all. Tried a couple of other tools including the ax.
LOL I am thinking I shall have to resort to the rototiller. But I think what
I will do first is to soak the ground first and see if it will turn over
then. I am just a little person and too old to fight with it but I want that
ground so I can expand! Any suggestions would be helpful.
linda
Updated linda's Garden of Eden: http://photos.yahoo.com/womyn47
You are right as I discovered last night. I went out to pull up more rock
and fabric and changed locations and under the fabric it was soaked, but
only a little softer. I didn't spend much time worrying about that part
though as most of it will again be pathway except for about six inches that
will be turned into garden. However, the rest of the way around this patch
will be garden so I will pull everything up then water it heavily so that it
will soften up. I suspect that I won't be able to do it all alone, but maybe
if I just do a little every day. One patch that I did reclaim for a garden
this year is full of rocks. I tried to get most out, at least the bigger
ones, but the veggies grew there nicely anyway, but I will have to screen it
all over time. Kind of creepy though these large crevasses, feels like the
Twilight Zone where something will shove its hand up, grab me and pull me
into the underworld. So, if I disappear you know I have been kidnapped.
Thanks John for sharing...gives me hope if I persevere all will turn out
well and that I am not a crazed woman trying. Sometimes I think I am just
battling nature and then stop to realize that this weed fabric is not part
of nature and shouldn't be there.
linda
Updated linda's Garden of Eden: http://photos.yahoo.com/womyn47
Linda, Lancaster is the man who wrote the article on the Man Who
Farms Water. He did the research in his own stomping grounds in the
arid southwestern US using the old African man's ideas to see how
well it worked here. That is what the book he wrote is about, though
I still haven't read it.=20
Gloria, Texas
US zone 8a
--- In GardeningOrganically@yahoogroups.com, "linda"
wrote:
> Not the same guy though, this one is quite older. Zimbabwe...oh,
maybe The
> Man Who Farms Water. You triggered my memory. Let me look...ah Here
is one
> site about him....=20
http://ag.arizona.edu/OALS/ALN/aln46/lancaster.html
> Gloria had originally been the one to turn me on to him. I must
read more
> about him. I am going to go read what you have sent too and see how
that
engaging
> speaker, young and still wet behind the ears... we caught up with
him at
> our favorite nursery in Abq. where we got his book
> http://www.plantsofthesouthwest.com/cgi-bin/plantview.cgi?
_recordnum=3D240
> . You can also pick it up at http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/ .
> "Buy this book now. If you live in a dry place, buy it. If you live
> somewhere subject to droughts (which is everywhere), buy it. The
simple
> techniques (and the principles behind them) can help you save
bunches of
> money, and make the landscape around you more productive and
beautiful,
> with less work and upkeep than you can imagine. Lend it to your
neighbors,
> and you'll benefit as well. (Heck-buy them each a copy.) This how-to
> manual has enough stories, illustrations and simple ideas to
inspire even
> the most unhandy among us (such as myself). Buy it, try a couple of
> projects in your backyard, and in a few years be sure to send Brad
and me a
> thank you note!"
> - Kevin Dahl, Executive Director of Native Seeds/SEARCH and author
of Wild
> Foods of the Sonoran Desert and Native Harvest: Gardening with
Authentic
is
