New iris bed help

DH is digging up a new iris bed about 50' x 100'. The soil is dirty sand. My other irises around the house are doing well. The zone is 7b-8 and across the Chesapeake Bay in VA. I have never had a large bed like this. I figure the rows will need something down on top of the walkways but must let water through because it is on top of the septic field.
Please help with advice on preparing the bed and the rows in between.
TY
deb


EEEEEk! I just looked out here in Blacksburg and we are going to get a BIG storm in a min. Yea for the rain we need it so horribly but I have to load a horse I sold into a trailer between 2 and 3!!!

Are you going commercial, and want some advice for commercial beds, or is it to be landscaped beds?

First make sure you have access for a large truck to the septic, so it can be pumped if necessary. We have a new septic, and they say they don't have to be pumped now, but I still leave access to it.

Not commercial, just pleasure. Not landscaped, just rows for easy access. It will not be over the septic tank and I am pretty sure a truck could get close enough otherwise hubby would say so. We were told no horses running over it, no garden (yuck!) there, and we knew no trees.

Could also use some input on preparing the soil (sand).
TY
debbie

Debbie, it won't be instant soil but are you pretty close to peanut growing country there? If you can find a source for peanut shells, they mixed with some compost and/or manure break down to pretty nice soil in a year or two. I've seen them sold at a stone and topsoil place in Harrisonburg so I'm sure they'd be even easier to find if you're near Sussex, Dinwiddie or other Southside areas where peanuts are grown.

The garden bed at my old house had been improved with peanut shells and it had wonderful soil.

I haven't seen peanuts here. Soybeans, tomatoes, wheat, and corn seem to be the major crops. The one or two cotton crops they let go and never harvested. I will probably have to drive to MD just to get horse hay!

I use the pro landscape material fabric, comes in rolls of 3 ft X 300 ft to put down the center of the rows to keep weeds out. Works wonderful, but it's not so attractive.

And this is going to sound wrong to some people, but it works on sandy soil. I mulch the bearded irises with straw. It's cheap and it's easy to apply. I just cover the whole bed with straw and then pull it back away from the irises, leaving a couple of inches around the irises. It keeps the irises clean and weed free, and because it is sandy soil it does not make them too damp. I would never use mulch on a heavier soil. I don't use any additives in my soil, and I just water with MiracleGro. I have no rot, and the leaves look lovely all year.

Peanuts are a huge crop in the two counties I named and I'm sure are grown in nearby counties too. Peanuts look a little bit like young, upright potato plants. You wouldn't see peanuts on the plants - they grow underground.

This is clipped from a press release but the counties listed are the ones in Virginia where peanuts are commercially grown.

Dinwiddie: Robert Perkins; Mike Parrish, county agent

Greensville: Glenn Moore; Rebecca Barnes, county agent

Isle of Wight: David N. Horton; Robert Goerger, county agent

Prince George: Billy Dickens and Stanley Lipchak; Glen Chappell, county agent

Suffolk: Lawrence Goodman; Cliff Slade, county agent

Surry: Cox Farms, Sammy Cox; Rex Cotton, county agent

Sussex: H. Collier Presson Jr.; Kelvin Wells, county agent.

Anyway, just a suggestion in case that would be a cheap source of soil amendments in that area.

All the 'soil' in my yard is sand.. I had to buy bags and bags of compost/top soil to plant anything in the back yard.. and I just mixed it in where ever I was planting something....... In the front yard, we just had a dump truck bring in 12 yards of 'planting mix' to mix into an area that is 23 ft x 17 ft...

wish I had that much room to plant!

I have used landscape fabric as polly has suggested and cover it with hardwood mulch to form walkways between the rows. Around the rhizomes I mulch with pine straw. The pine straw is kept off of the actual rhizome, and will last 2 seasons. I mix a handful of alfalfa meal into the soil before planting each rhizome and also use 6-24-24 fertilizer ~6 weeks before bloom and again in the fall.
Picture of one of my seedling beds prepared as described.
Dennis

hart...TY for the info. Our house is in southern Accomac County which is across the Bay. From VA Beach you have to cross the bay and drive about 1/2 way up the pennisula toward MD. No peanuts over here. I chatted with the county extension agent there when we were putting in pasture. I altered his seed mix recommendation as I wasn't happy with one of the grasses and the State Farm Feed Store manager told me I was correct. So...on my own with the help of you all.

naomimade...I know what you mean about soil...bags and bags! Bags and bags of pine bark mulch for around the house, too. I wonder if shreeded pine bark mulch would do as well as the needles? But I guess you can buy bales of needles????? never knew that! We have 6 1/2 acres there but most has to be pasture for my two horses and I get to have a few (4-5) chickens!! LOL!

dd95172...great looking bed!! I have the landscape mesh that I used quite a bit around the foundation of the house. Maybe it was just too cheap? The wild onions come up through it. A pain to pull out as the bottoms won't come up through the mesh. Put pine bark nuggets over that to help keep the weeds.

Great!!! I am getting some great ideas! TY!!

Deb, we had the same problem when we moved in here. Nothing but pure sand, and when I went to try to buy topsoil all I could find was what I call 'dirty sand'. I'm originally from Illinois and was raised with 'chocolate cake' soil. What a shocker when I moved away and discovered that wasn't the norm!

I opted for composted hardwood mulch when we were digging the front bed, about 30 x 60. Got it from a wholesaler by the truck load. Relatively cheap. They have to turn their mulch to keep it from combusting, and eventually it starts to break down and no one wants it for mulch any more. Rototilled it in with additional blood meal. The bed is still growing strong. Now I compost everything and try not to buy many soil amendments. We've been here 10 years and the first thing I did was buy a bagger for the riding lawnmower and built 3 compost bins. Maybe in another 30 years I'll have 'real' soil. LOL

Roxanne

av_ocd_girl...funny! That is what I have been calling it too. "Dirtry sand". I think if you separated the sand from the dirt, about a tablespoon of dirt would come out of a gallon of the mixture...maybe! There are a couple of places I have seen there that sell mulch, sand, oyster shell, etc. Will check when I go back over Sat.
Our dirt here is "mud pie" yellow clay. Irises have never grown big in it.
My brother told me I needed a lawn mower bagger to collect the grass for hay! Most people there have to get theirs out of MD as baling hay there is almost nonexistent. Vet said I would have to feed my horses this stuff to keep sand flowing through their digestive systems until they learn better how to get the grass w/o the sand.

What kind of landscape fabric? How thick does it need to be?

thanks again to everyone!!

Here's a pic of our 'new' front yard with some real dirt.... I'm almost done planting it..... it's gonna be a yard ful!!!

I gotcha now, Deb. I didn't realize you were on the Eastern Shore. I'll bet that's gorgeous but, yeah, definitely not peanut country.

At least with horses you have a reliable source of very good soil making stuff. The nicest gardens I've seen were from ladies who kept horses and every scrap of the manure went into their gardens after being composted.

Naomi, that looks fantastic!! And you have little pathways here and there -- so important. I'll never forget my first iris bed -- about 10' x 8', and no pathways... What a mess! It took only a few months to figure out what trouble I was in!

Thank you!
LOL Betty! yeah... my iris bed in the back is very long... so that I can walk down one side....and then the other!

That is how I want mine! So I can walk to the end between the rows and then come back up the next. Keep the different cultivars separate from each other.
deb

what lovly looking black dirt. I miss our ponies (& the manure). But then our irises are planted where the ponies were. Older bed being shaded over. Good to talk to the county agent--they know local conditions.

OH...potting soil. I decided not to use that over there due to its sand content. I bought top soil instead for my other flower beds.
deb