An Engrowthing Hobby

Beside my slowly reviving emotional support lawn is a small flower bed.

Which is a term I apparently use very, very loosely.

The soil here is truly awful. It's basically silty gravel that keeps trying to turn itself into sandstone whenever it dries out. There used to be a daisy growing amongst the supposedly picturesque rocks in the middle but it just kinda died. The blue potato bush in the back basically never looks any better than half dead.

At one point I tried to grow some daikon radish here to break up the soil a little bit, but they pretty much immediately went to seed and never developed a taproot. But with the water restrictions temporarily gone, I figured I might give it another shot and see if keeping it wetter helps.

First task, move the stepping stones and plausibly decorative rocks, then rake off the regular rocks and the scattered remnants of bark mulch.

Well, it looks tidier now, at least.

But still pretty shit.

Next up, whack the "soil" with a hoe to try to at least break up the top inch or two. Then, speaking of shit...

When I top dressed my lawn, I got two extra bags of chicken shit to spread up here too. So spread them I will.

Instead of just top dressing, like I did on the lawn, I was able to actually mix it into the soil this time, so it promises to reek less and hopefully fertilize the soil more.

With the soil prep done, I moved the stepping stones back into place. I left the artisanal rocks piled up around the base of the plum tree, though, as I didn't really fancy having them scattered around the planting bed.

Finally, I scattered the remaining quantity of daikon seeds and lightly raked them in.

These things better fracking grow properly this time.

Not pictured: me watering in the planting bed. Also not pictured: me contemplating mulch options. I'd kind of like to use straw mulch, but that doesn't seem to be a thing in California, so I'll probably end up defaulting to black dyed bark mulch again. Either way I need to wait until after the seeds sprout so I don't smother them.