Dee's Garden ~ Part 1

There's a mom and pop 

garden nursery called Dee's Garden

that I love to go visit.

white flowers; Tall Garden Phlox  

Phlox p. 'shorty White'

day lilies foreground. 

I first became aware of this special

garden when it was one of the 

stops on our Shasta Lake Garden Tour and Tea.

Purple Coneflower

Echinacea p. Mangus

One of the reasons I'm fond

of this place is because they have the 

same poor red soil that we have here at home.

Their garden is only five years old.

When they first started the garden,

he had one and a half feet of top

soil bulldozed to the side

 of the 1/2 acre garden.

Then he purchased loads and loads 

of compost from the Redding's 

transfer station.  They compost on 

on a huge scale and then sell the compost

after it's ready to local gardeners. 

Coreopsis 'Tabitian Sunset'   and Castor Bean

He  (Dee's husband) 

said that they then mixed it 

with the soil that they scraped aside,

and that the ratio of compost to soil

was 50/50. 

He say's he hasn't added anything since.

I asked him if he top dressed at all.

Nope.

I've been skeptical of the compost

sold there at the transfer station (dump),

because I wasn't sure what pesticides

and stuff might still be in the compost.

But with results like this...

I may reconsider my opinion

and try this compost

rather than the mushroom compost

that we've been buying. 

Castor Bean

I do know that good rich

soil is the key to successful  gardening.

Montbretia

Crocosmia 'Lucifer'

If you are local to our Redding area,

Dee's Garden is a nice place

to see what's possible with our heat

and soil conditions.