Wow, awesome ideas for coping with some very difficult niches! (Removed all the topsoil...OMWTFBBQ!)
Our previous garden was also on clay subsoil, but at least there it was the developers' fault, because they scraped the whole site down to the subsoil when they built. We bought our house FORTY YEARS after that happened, and barely an inch of topsoil had managed to regenerate. It was incredibly frustrating. I had good luck with lemon balm, spearmint, pineapple sage, and day-lilies. Lots of people in my neighborhood had luck with echinaceas and black-eyed susans -- mine didn't survive, but my new garden has a good three inches of clayey topsoil and the black-eyed susans and garlic chives were already running rampant when we moved in.
For tons of info on edible plants that tolerate shade, check out Edible Forest Gardens by David Jacke and Eric Toensmeier (which I was just pimping over on permaculture).
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Date: 2009-04-28 12:44 pm (UTC)Our previous garden was also on clay subsoil, but at least there it was the developers' fault, because they scraped the whole site down to the subsoil when they built. We bought our house FORTY YEARS after that happened, and barely an inch of topsoil had managed to regenerate. It was incredibly frustrating. I had good luck with lemon balm, spearmint, pineapple sage, and day-lilies. Lots of people in my neighborhood had luck with echinaceas and black-eyed susans -- mine didn't survive, but my new garden has a good three inches of clayey topsoil and the black-eyed susans and garlic chives were already running rampant when we moved in.
For tons of info on edible plants that tolerate shade, check out Edible Forest Gardens by David Jacke and Eric Toensmeier (which I was just pimping over on