ᐅ Greening a garage wall

Bau-Schmidt schrieb:
I would not recommend Virginia creeper. It grows very vigorously.

Vigorous growth is welcome. For us, it is quite the opposite problem. We have been struggling with poor growth for years. All the gardeners kept telling us that we would never stop trimming hedges and everything would grow out of control. Now, the same gardeners are surprised by the so-called weeds that just won’t take off.

It will probably take years of regularly adding compost soil to get at least the ornamental and edible plants to grow properly. Our soil seems completely depleted and contaminated after centuries of farming.

kaho674 schrieb:
The soil on our land seems completely depleted and contaminated after centuries of farming.

If your plot of land was used for agriculture in the medium term before your construction, depletion is definitely possible.

There are two approaches you could take: As you suggested, you could work on building up humus over several years, possibly combined with moderate amounts of manure.

Alternatively, you could choose plants that are adapted to poor soils. However, this might mean you won’t get nice tall hedges... which is unfortunate.

Have you taken soil samples and had them analyzed? Also, what is the general soil structure? How many centimeters (inches) of topsoil are there, and what is underneath? Sand? Loam? Clay?

In principle, too much sand is not beneficial for growth because a) it is low in nutrients and b) it drains water quickly (the opposite problematic case would be a dense clay layer where water pools).

In both cases, adding the missing soil type can significantly improve the ground. However, this involves considerable work.

We have about 40cm (16 inches) of topsoil. Below that is clay. We have planted only native species as hedges—plants that are usually removed as weeds elsewhere. Still, they are struggling to establish themselves.

I planned to improve the worst spots this weekend by adding compost soil. I have also scattered horn shavings here and there. This will be a long-term project. 🙂

I would dig down about two spade lengths and add fresh humus. Forty centimeters (16 inches) of topsoil on clay is not ideal. A mixture of topsoil and clay, 60–80cm (24–31 inches) deep, is better.

From my grandparents’ allotment garden, I remember the "trick" of shaping guano into small balls (about marble-sized) wrapped in newspaper to create a fertilizer depot near the roots of nutrient-deficient plants.

chand1986 schrieb:
I would dig down two spade lengths and add fresh topsoil.

Yes, I would like to do that too. But we’re talking about a 150m (490 ft) hedge here. 😱
I’d rather go with the candy. 😉