Calen asks about plant on mounds in tight - draining soil :
“ I ’m a native Cracker from [ coastal Florida ] . I ’ve been homesteading on patrimonial farmland with a survivalist and traditionalist mind-set for three years now . All heirloom and constitutional , etc . I own all of your Holy Scripture , and they , along with your web log and picture have been the most helpful gardening advice that I ’ve ever found anywhere . Last year I turn tons of Seminole pumpkins with corking success using your ‘ melon pits ’ . I passed that along to many friends who did also . I also plant the pumpkins in many ‘ insurgent gardens ’ in the swamp and backwoods on public acres , and that ’s worked out great as well . I never revisit them until harvest time , and they commonly do better than my tended ones . Anyways , this year I need to give the three sister a attempt . My plan is to use Jimmy Red maize , Cherokee black pole bean and Seminole pumpkins . fairly much everything I take says to plant on mound . However , my place is eminent , wry , east - bank - of - Lake George lucre Baroness Dudevant . Is mound the room I should go ? We did n’t even have stand pee during the preceding two hurricanes . My idea was to perchance do these in tenuous pits like the melons and pumpkins but want to see if you had any advice on the subject ? Thanks for your sentence . ”
wonderful . It ’s good to get a line from a fellow Floridian .
Mounds are what you always hear about . It ’s even on the back of the seed packets . Calen is right to query the practice in his soil conditions .
For people who have n’t establish in Florida sugar sand , it ’s hard to excuse how very hot , dry , and fast - drain the material is . It hold in almost no hummus and needier harvest planted in sugar moxie postulate almost constant watering .
My old homestead in North Florida had large patches ofalmostsandy loam with smaller grains which would hold water for long . There , I would double - dig and tease apart the land to plant , which would mound it up jolly .
Those open stir bed did very well , so it would be light to say “ oh yes , Calen , go before and plant in mound – it works in Florida ! ”
But sugar Baroness Dudevant is n’t the same as the stain above . Just because something work in one area of a state does n’t mean it will work in another . And in his domain , I would endeavor to stay as savourless as possible .
When you raise the meridian of the soil in one area , the water will debilitate out of it faster as it get its level . You really ca n’t afford to get that encounter . If he ’s not holding onto water even after a hurricane , raised beds and mound , unless amend with additional compost before every planting , are not the way to go .
You might require to go the other path completely and grow in sunken bed , as is sometimes done in the Southwestern US .
Even in my old yard , the back yard was loamy and the front K was sandier .
This is how I used to plant melons and pumpkin in my fast - draining front grand :
Those are sprouting legume , by the way . In the winter I would imbed melon vine pits with nerveless - time of year leguminous plant like lentils , chickpeas , pea and fava beans to feed the soil and pave the agency for the curcurbits I planted in the spring .
I would try plant in deep-set beds , Calen , and see how it work . If you really want to see if if makes a difference , plant one area flat , one field in sunken beds , and one area on mound , then liken how they did over the time of year . That would be a really good way to gain a lot of data point from one growing time of year .
I establish corn in monotone ground when I had a sandy area :
And on mounds in clay :
You ’re correct to think outside the mound . Thanks for writing and for the kind Logos – press on !
You get serious extra point for guerilla horticulture Seminole pumpkins . The melon Inferno method is one of my favorite discoveries .
If you ’re reading this and do n’t get laid what Calen is utter about , here ’s how to make a melon cavity :
In sand , jab deep and go for an indentation instead of a mound .
Finally , Calen : I ’d do it to see picture of what you end up determine on . Happy horticulture .
