Now that we have been composting like gangbustas since last spring, we have a pile of compost that stands approximately 4 x 4 x 3 feet. We also have compost in our tumbler that will overflow a wheelbarrow. Next step, plan the garden! I know what I like to look at in the way of flowers (I always plant a profusion of different color impatients in the front of my house where it’s shady all the time by the porch. What a lovely way to enter a house, past all that color!). I like a lot of color, and something that I can cut and bring into the house in a cut flower arrangement. My first year with a garden in this house, we got rid of the top two feet of soil (aka CLAY) and replaced it with store bought compost, peat and top soil. Then I threw down some zinnia seeds, watered, and BLAM! I had the most magnificent array of color ever! I keep trying to recreate that, but a lot has changed in my yard since I threw those zinnia seeds out. The biggest difference is the amount of shade in my back yard. It’s on the south side of the house, so it gets pounded by summer sun. So to protect the paint on my house, keep cooling energy costs down, and give us some privacy from neighbors, we planted trees. Oh yeah, the kids needed something to climb and the birds and squirrels needed homes. We lived on the prairie! No trees.

Anyway, so now I have tons of shade in my yard, which is great, but it definitely impacts what plants I can grow, right? Then there’s the soil. I don’t know where it goes, but what I put into that 2 foot trench that we excavated along the back fence is no longer an airy mixture of peat, top soil and compost! The sun has baked it and the plants have sucked the nutrients right out of it.

So I figure I'll first address the soil composition question. Stay tuned to see what I do to answer the question: "What kind of soil to I really have and what will grow in it?"