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Serving the Veneta and Fern Ridge Communities
Welcome to Westside Gardeners’ Club › Forums › Gardening Questions, Topics and Solutions › Gardening Info from Stephen
First the Drainage Myth problem…
Soil in a plant pot or container has a saturation zone at the bottom where the water is held in the soil matrix above a transition layer. If you add gravel then the saturation zone moves up and you have less growing room for plant roots to expand. You’ve just put your plant in a smaller pot.
Next Soil pH Testing – Here’s a link with details on testing garden soil, and there’s a video showing soil collection. There is also a Soil Test Interpretation Guide If you want to collect soil samples for testing you can get them to me before April 1 and I will run the assays at OSU Extension – $2 per test or 3 tests for $6 for Garden Club Members.
The best place for detailed soil analysis is here: https://www.simplysoiltesting.com/ They deal well with garden samples as opposed to agricultural stuff.
Next seeds from the yellow bins:
Golden Clematis (Clematis tangutica)
https://landscapeplants.oregonstate.edu/plants/clematis-tangutica
Coyote Brush (or bush) (Baccharis pilularis) https://landscapeplants.oregonstate.edu/plants/baccharis-pilularis
Money plant (or Honesty or silver dollar plant) (Lunaria biennis)
https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?taxonid=278072
This turns out to be moderately invasive in the PNW as a forest understory plant. If you want to grow it for dried arrangements, cut the drying stems before they become brittle and collect the seeds in a paper bag. You can use the dried stems for arranging and keep the seeds out of general circulation.
Great info….thx. I didn’t know about the gravel-in-pots thing.