That's the back half of our barn. The front half has a cinder block foundation so we built a new roof on that part after we knocked the barn down. The back half had a crumbling foundation, so it became a gothic garden area complete with pond. Flowers are planted in what used to be the gutters.
This thread has some truly stunning and educational sustainable garden porn.
We had those in FL too, but never had to dig them up. Same with poinsettias. But it gets so darned hot in the summer and the soil is just sand. I am liking Virginia so far.
So pretty! The vines here get amazingly thick here. I have seen them as thick as a mans arm! Of course that is not so great when it is poison ivy.
We have two natural ponds on our property and a small lagoon behind our barn that is just begging to be turned into a pond. When we bought our farm it was being used to water livestock. We cleaned it out and once clean, it began to loose water. We have left it alone and we have began to see it once again start to hold water but I'm considering dropping a tarp liner in it (there is a tarp manufacturer near us) and then letting the fun began doing landscaping around it. I've created three ponds in the past. This one would be more of a habitat type of pond for frog and the like.
I have two broken ponds, and a bunch of broken swales. There's a product out of Australia, can't remember the name but it helps to fix leaks in ponds. Top of my place is 1019 feet above sea level with the 1 acre pond at about 850 feet. The major swale is at 950 feet and used to feed the upper pond. lower pond is 1/4 acre and at 750 feet. I need to clear all the fallen trees and fix the burms and maybe I can get this property working as it's supposed to. We also have mountain streams that used to feed the lower pond, but have since found other places to go. The joys of a fixer upper.@nminusyplusm I love your banana tree! I have one that was about 3 feet tall last fall. Silly cats broke it off at the bulb so I babied it back into sprouting again. Right now it's a little over 2 feet tall but it's sitting up so the cats cant get at it again.
Concerning clay soil. We have been crumbling dry wall left over from building projects and sprinkling it on the garden and yard. When we planted our orchard the people at Starke's told us to plant a chunk of dry wall with each tree. Our soil here is VERY rich in clay with a thin layer of rich top soil on top. We planted our orchard over an old corral. There is at least a foot of top soil before you hit clay but we still dropped dry wall in with each new tree.
Don't get me started on ponds.
