Vegetable Garden and What To Do With All Those Rocks

When I think about the folks that settled this land I often wonder about their ruggedness. Homesteading was not easy no matter where they settled, but it must have been much tougher on the Edwards Plateau. It amazes me how different the weather is here compared to San Antonio. Because of the elevation I get a lot more wind. As I write the wind is gusting outside. I recently bought a little weather station that included a wind speed indicator with storm detection ability just to find out how windy it is outside.

Wind is not the biggest problem out here, it is rocks. Rocks are a major asset and a major pain in the neck. There are rocks everywhere. I have lived in areas before considered to have a lot of rocks but nothing compares to this place. I can look out of any window in the house and see hundreds of rocks. They latterly dot the landscape.

One of the goals I had for this land was to grow food. In most parts of the world if you want to plant a vegetable garden you simply rototill the land, plant some seeds and water. Not here. Sometime last spring I started clearing the rocks from an 8 by 12 foot area of land. Once the larger rocks were relocated, I began the tedious process of digging up the grass and small rocks. I soon learned that a hoe works much better at digging up the rocks then a shovel does, but both tools were needed. Once the top layer of rocks and grasses were removed, I slowly, layer by layer, started “hoeing” up rocks. When there was enough gravel and dirt accumulated I would shovel it onto a metal window screen positioned over a wheel barrow. Of course specks of rocks would fall through the screen but the majority of the small rocks and gravel would remain while most of the dirt would fall through into the wheel barrow. The soil here has a high clay content and most of the clumps of clay were too big to fall through the screen.

When I started the work on the first garden plot I had hoped to finish in time to plant some vegetable seeds but the work was slow and tedious. Frequent trips to San Antonio and Kerrville also slowed the work down. But mostly it was all those rocks that made the work so slow. I am guessing I removed over a million rocks, of all sizes, from that 8 by 12 foot plot of land. In the end I was able to dig down about 5 to 6 inches before reaching solid rock.

I started working on this garden plot last spring. I finished the first phase today. This morning I removed my last rock from the garden plot. There is no more digging to be done. I may not have finished in time for the 2010 growing season but I will be ready to plant in the spring.

As I removed the rocks from the dirt I needed a place to put the dirt, so as I finished one side of the plot I returned the dirt to that side. But I also added grass, some prickly pear, and other items to form a compost bed. I am hoping come spring it will all have turned into compost, turning the dirt into fertile soil. This morning I poured several buckets of water on the heap, along with compost starter.

A good foot of soil is needed to grow vegetables so I plan on building up the sides of the garden plot by about 6 inches using rocks. Then I will have a raised vegetable garden. I will have to purchase some good black soil to fill in the plot, but that can wait tell next year. For now I am just celebrating my accomplishment. In years to come I plan on building more vegetable plots so that even more food is grown. The more vegetables that are grown the less have to be purchased at the store.

All those rocks I removed from the ground are being put to use. After pricing how much it will cost to wrap a deck around the house, I decided to reduce the size of that deck and instead make a rock walkway in front of the house. After removing the grass from between the front door and the pipe to the septic system, I placed wagon loads of the small pebbles, gravel, and cliché (clay) so that people will be able to walk to the front door without having to step over the septic pipe and/or walk in mud. Today I basically finished that segment of the walk, though in the future I will probably add some stepping stones. But first a rock wall (skirt) around the mobile home needs to be installed.

I have also been using the gravel and cliché to fill in pot holes down the road from me. This land is located on a road the county does not maintain. Since all the other land owners on this road are absentee, meaning they actually live somewhere else, it is basically up to me to fill in the pot holes.

Even though I did not finish the garden plot in time for the 2010 growing season, I did grow some vegetables. Five large pots full of good black soil were left in front of the house by the previous owner. I have grown lettuce and zucchini in those pots. The tomato plant did not do very well. Neither did the first zucchini plant. Someone ate it one night, leaving barely an inch of stems. So I had to plant new seeds late in the year. That is one danger of having an unfenced garden—critters will help themselves. So a fence is going to have to be built around the garden plot I just completed today. I enjoy seeing the wild animals out here but I do not enjoy sharing the vegetables I work hard to grow with them.


Top Picture: garden plot (the front is filled with dirt, dead grass, and other stuff for composting).
Middle Picture: walk way between stairs and septic pipe.
Bottom Picture: I placed most, but not all, of the large rocks outside the the garden plot as I removed them. The medium size rocks I located elsewhere.