Humus

Can you put too much humus in your perennial flower bed? I think I did. The flowers kept saying "humus-rich" soil. So, I bought bags and added a bunch. I think that was a mistake. The soil is looking like wet clay-mud. I should have got on this site first, I thought it was a pretty straight forward thing, but after reading - I can see that it is not. oh-boy

Should I try to rescue my newly planted perennials?

This must have been a happy accident. We had a very good rain, all evening and into the night. I thought it might do the perennials in. Quite the opposite. Everything has perked up and is growing. I'm not sure if it was the Miracle-Gro or the humus. Or both. The plants are definitely thriving. The dianthus are just about to bloom and the Japanese Iris have loved the rain and moist soil and have grown. Everything looks green, perky and healthy.

What I think I will do differently is not water so often. With all that humus in there, I think twice a week maximum is plenty - and only if we don't get rain. It would be nice to get this kind of rain once a week. We are so used to drought conditions here, I was watering every day. Definitely need to back off watering. Everything looks so good - I guess it wasn't such a mistake after all.

I'm so relieved - I put hours into that flower bed. They're kind of like my children.

Most plants will sulk and look pitiful for a few days after transplanting but will perk up in short order if planted correctly and in good soil.

Good luck and let us know how they turn out.

Karen

actually your humus is probably more compost than actual humus.
humus is more compost than compost. or broken down more and it's good.
if you still have clay and mud your okay. if you planted in the pure "humus" it probably would have just washed away. so if it didnt all wash away that's good. the humus wouldn't have any salts so you shouldn't burn anything.

Okay, well, guess who dug up the entire perennial bed and replanted everything this weekend. I think what convinced me was what happened to the soil when it started drying out. It literally felt like concrete. I thought, no, no, that can't be good. So I dug all the new transplants up (forturnately they hadn't grown too much - how could they in clay/humus/concrete) put in a very good soil made just for perennials and put everything back in again.

It's raining now, and that should help them get settled in (hopefully). They don't look bad, in fact they are perking right up. I'll send a picture when they get a little more growth. It's mostly a bed of dirt and some little plants right now.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and advice. The things we do for our gardens! (Rolling eyes) Plus, the things I think I know that I really don't. (Rolling eyes) LOL

This might not be the forum to say this, but yes, you can have too much humus for perennials. Too much compost -- not sure I truly understand the difference, but like you, I kept reading that about plants, and I thought I would just circumvent all the soil completely and go for the good stuff. I bought a triaxle of humus and had them dump it in one of those retaining wall gardens we made. A big one. I thought that would be enough, but it didn't completely fill the bed, so I had to get a lttle dump truck full of actual soil for the west end of the bed. As time passed, the bed just disintegrated before my eyes....it just kept decomposing and the soil levelkept getting lower and lower. I had not only perennials, but also actual TREES gorwing in it. The only good thing that happened was that the most expensive and biggest growing tree was on the west end where there was actual soil. The cool vareigated dogwoods just kept sinking and sinking. Things grew really well, especially things that don't like all the rain we get and rot out. However as it kept sinking and sinking, I had to either bring in more soil or dig up all the plants and add soil and replant. We ended up adding on to the house and they covered up my huge perenial garden with nasty clay --oh, and it's still sinking.

New story. I decided to grow hostas and ferns in a shady area and brought in lots and lots of horse manure. LOTS. (I never do things by half) We tilled it in with the existing soil in about a 50-50 ratio. (see, I learned something from the retaining wall). Then I would top dress with manure. The plants were not as happy as I thought they'd be and every time I dug into it, it smelled like a sewer. Not like horse manure which I think smells good, but like sewere gas. Hmmm. So I brought in a truck load of coarse sand, tilled it in, and now have the finest soil in the county. Ok, I don't really know this, but it is very nice soil and a pleasure to dig in. Years later, we added on to our house again, and they had to trench out a line through there for electric, phone & cable and OMG! The sewer smell was baaaaaack. It stunk up the whole neighborhood for 2 or 3 days -- ok, not the whole neighborhood, but the 4 houses that meet in that corner, and really for 2 or 3 days. The bottom line here is that once you get enough organic matter in the soil, add some air. Sand will help with the air. Pea Gravel (another story of what not to do) does not provide a lot of air. I think you need the sharp edges of sand.

Suzy

Suzy - thank you for your stories. I don't feel all alone in this humus thing. Sounds like your soil worked out very well. Maybe except for the smell. I'd put up with some smell, if I could have terrific soil! We do learn from these learning experiences.

I used to live in Oklahoma in an area near a riverbed. I swear the entire neighborhood was hardly anything but sand and a little soil. I thought at first, nothing is going to grow here. Boy was I wrong. Anything I put in the ground, grew and grew and grew. (It had to be well watered). I'm still learning to adjust to the soil here. We contend with rocks, clay, and a few boulders thrown in for good measure, ha! But, the good news is the perennial garden seems to coming along just fine. We've had a couple days of rain, and the plants look like they are flourishing. But I did learn something about soil in this last couple of interesting weeks.

So what did you actually add to your beds and how much did you add? What brand? Some of the bagged stuff is really good, but much of it is pretty lousy.

I have had good luck with two bagged products. LeafGro is a really good compost manufactured in Maryland (it is only available in the DC area). Another one is a product that I think is named "Clay Breaker". It is a mostly made of pine bark fines and I think it has some gypsum added in. The biggest issue with both is that they are around $5 for a 2 cu ft bag. I would love to have loads of homemade compost for my beds, but my setup only yields about 1 cu yd of compost per year...and that gets used up pretty fast.

- Brent

Yeah, but where you are, Brent, everyone's throwing out huge bags of leaves and such in the older neighborhoods. That's my favorite soil conditioner: chopped leaves. Oh, and the layers and layers of straw and grass clippings and chicken-poopy wood shavings I use for mulch. :)

Right...my biggest source of "compost" is not from the store or from my compost bins. It is from the various type of organic matter than I use for mulching. There is a county pickup location near my work where I can get shredded wood and shredded leaf mulch for free. I moved a year ago, but at my previous house I used some areas around my veggie garden as a "soil factory". That is where I would dump collected organic matter and the resulting soil would make its way into other beds.

BTW, showmestate: I would recommend that you do some research into the use of synthetic fertilizers such as MiracleGro. I used to think my brother was a wacko when he talked about organic stuff. Now I am the one using organic products. My take these days is that as a gardener you do not grow plants; you just create an environment where plants grow themselves. Creating great soil is a big part of that and synthetic fertilizers are not a part of building great soil.

- Brent

I'm convinced that you're absolutely right about feeding the soil instead of the plant.

My best friend, who lives next door, is the world's poorest excuse I've ever seen for a gardener. She plants flowers, then they die. She has no interest in gardening, hardly ever even waters. The only thing that ever survives in their flower bed is a stone which we bought as a gift. It reads "I tried, but it died". Her idea of fertilizing is occasionally dousing with Miracle Grow.

I'm a wintersower and get way too many plants with the method. I decided to plant some of them in her flower bed this year, things that I thought even she couldn't kill. Unfortunatedly I have poor germination on the echinaceas so far but if more don't come up I'll do more next year. I'm giving her one or two of everything as I plant out the seedlings. When I dig in her flower beds it's just nasty old hard (when dry) or gooey (when wet) clay. By contrast my organically enriched soil is nice, soft, and dark. The only bugs I find in her bed are grubs, whereas every time I stick a trowel into my beds I find big fat worms and lots of them. We have the same native soil since we live next door to one another.

I just stopped the chemicals in my garden a couple of years ago but I see a huge difference in the soil. I have also added my small amount of homemade compost over many years but I suspect I counteracted that with the chemicals. I will still use an occasional shot of Round-Up but other than that it's organic. I'm convinced.

Karen