Congratulation. Your tree and soil look fine. Make sure your dog can't urinate on your tree because the dog urine will kill the tree.

Thanks Steve. Those are my 3 1/2 month old bluetick beagle baby girls. I watch them very close when I bring them around my trees. They could chew one up in a skinny minute if they got half a chance. Last week I noticed a strange plant growing in the gritty mix of my clementine. It looked like sweet potato so I went to look in a bucket where I was making some slips and they were all tore up and slung all over the place. I was surprised when I pulled the sweet potato out of the pot, it had taken serious root and they were already getting deep. Now I'm wondering if I could grow sweet taters in the gritty mix?

Don't grow sweet potatoes in gritty mix

Lol. I'm a curios person. I cant help but wonder what would happen.

The gritty mix will embed into the potatoes skin

Steve you are way hilarious!!! lol I can't imagine biting a potato loaded with grit in it!! hahahah

Angela, you can grow anything in it. The only one downside to it is that you must stay on top of watering until you get use to it. Seems you have it under control Good job! Just make sure to fertilize a lot!

Thanks Mike, It has been a roller coaster ride for sure and I am glad now that I forced myself to stick with this gritty mix. Don't say anything to Steve but his last comment just made me even more curios than I already was. I'm going to start some more sweet potato slips and attempt to grow them in the gritty mix this winter in my grow room.

sweet potatoes need a lot of heat 85F+ to do well. The gritty mix will not move as the potato expands and will get embedded with grit. If you are growing the SP for greens then go ahead.

Steve

I never messed with SP's until this year and they did very well. I did half of a 4'x10' bed and then did four slips in a 20 gallon tote. I've eaten them all summer out of the bed and yesterday pulled one out of the tote. I love 'em and it sure would be nice to do another 20 gallon tote this winter. I have a small tropical room set up and I think the heat from the lights will be adequate. The tote is deep and you are probably right about the weight of the gritty embedding into the potato. I've got a half whiskey barrel of good soil prepared for this already but when I seen how fast that slip rooted in the gritty it got me to thinking. I'm thinking along the lines of half perlite and half napa floor dry. It would be cleaner and wouldn't introduce bugs into my house. What do you think? Here's a pic of the first one I pulled out of the tote yesterday.

Nice method, you have a lot of patience to make a gradient of changing soil like that. If this mix works well with your growing style and schedule, then it will do well! I personally don't water often and I'm happy to have the top dry out more than the bottom so a 60/40 peat/perlite works for me..unless I see signs of damage later! Any hints on how to recreate your "magic homemade compost" recipe? :)

Mike I can see why you thought I was kidding.

Next years sweet potato beds

Steve

Poncirusguy How do you keep your plants from falling off the roof when it gets windy? How do you even get your plants up there?

That roof is only 4 feet above the surrounding ground. I use a step 2 feet off the ground and then walk up to the crest. The containers are empty then I add 5 gallons of dirt at a time.

Steve

Wow Steve! That's impressive. You must like SP's as much as I do. What do you do with so many? I just did enough to do a little "test run" this year but I'm already thinking about next spring and will be planting a whole lot more.

Mike, Steve ain't no joke. I've got some plastic containers that are just a bit smaller than half whiskey barrels but not as deep. I will do one with 1-1-1 gritty just to see what happens. I will do a second one with perlite and napa floor dry. What part perlite to what part floor dry would you guys do?

kvetchlambkin, thanks for the kind words. When I first started gardening a few years ago I knew pretty much nothing about it. Everything I read talked about the importance of compost, so I started researching how to make compost. If I remember correctly one of the better articles was "compost 101" just google and you will find a ton of info. I always preferred the "hot method". This method gives you usable compost in a fairly quick time frame. To start with you need a lot of leaves. In the fall when people start bagging up their leaves I would go around and collect them before the city picked them up. I met with people and asked permission and asked questions about what if any pesticides they used and stuff like that. Also no leaves from walnut trees. I would dump a bunch of them on the ground and mow them up with a push mower until they were chopped up pretty fine. Start with a layer of that, then add a layer of greens, like left over plants out of the garden, grass clippings and stuff like that, then a layer of chicken manure, throw in some wood ashes, etc etc. There is a lot of stuff that is good for composting and a lot of stuff that is not. I would build my piles in layers with chopped up stuff, adding in "hot stuff". After it sits a few days it heats up and gets pretty hot. After a week or so goes by it cools back down. After the pile cooled down, I took a pitch fork and put the top third in a separate pile, the middle third in another pile. Then make a new pile...what was the top becomes the middle, the middle becomes the bottom and what was the bottom is now the top of the new pile. It heats back up and cools back down. Repeat this a few times and you end up with some really good compost in a short amount of time. Chopping everything up makes things go a lot faster. It's really interesting and there are many other methods also. Just google it and you will get a ton of info. Make a bunch of piles and you will develop muscles in places you didn't know you had! lol Hope this helps.

Angela

Thank you Angela! I've read and watched videos on composting but haven't committed to starting yet. I've heard leaves are one of the best for remineralizing, so that's must be where the magic comes from! I think I'm going to go for vermicomposting instead. I say that now but I take forever to actually start. I'll make sure to throw in some leaves that are around for the worms!