I remember watching The Victory Garden with Jim Crockett and his successor. Later came The Square Foot Gardener. Both stressed creating a healthy environment for the plants. Later I went to seminars in Illinois and Signal Mountain, TN. where I learned even more. French Intensive approaches taught me how important the balance of air, water, and soil are. Then I went to classes on aerobic composting at LSU and in Fayetteville, Ark.. I learned more about life in the soil and the food web through lots of study. Bottom line, here I spent lots of money and effort trying to better the depleted clay here, but this year was doing good to even get to the new garden. I couldn't tackle the prospect of tilling, so I reverted back to the idea of gardening on top of the bad soil. The tree cutters were more than happy to dump their huge loads here...for free. That was at least three years ago. The rest just came out of my doing what I could.
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