Edibles in the Shade: Update

Veggies and Edibles in the shade.  Update time!

During Winter, this bed directly in front of me received full morning sun and dappled for the remainder of the day.  With the season change, it is now more dappled with a few hours of direct afternoon sun.

All of the brassica family grew better and tasted better growing in partial shade.  And check out the size of that Florida Broadleaf Mustard with the bloom spike?  For comparison; that is my forearm crutch leaning against the tree beside it.

Note the top left hand quadrant of the photo above.  See the end of the wood fence?  That is the south edge of our property.  Running along the south edge from that fence and about 50 feet towards the street is my experimental perennial partial shade spot.  Basically from the rotted out oak tree stump bed west to the fence line.  For a width of approximately 4 ft.  This spot was not navigable when we moved in.  Completely overgrown with natives and invasives.  Clearing it required some a lot of stump grinding.  And continual pulling of wild (non bearing) grape vines, sword fern and cat brier.  Once we reached the point we could see ground and I started digging; I would dig up very old barbed wire and light wire stock fence.  Our subdivision was previously a chicken ranch.  The soil is curiously decent compared to the more normal pure sand spots around here.  So, I dug holes, planted stuff and didn't really do much soil improvement.

I have started piling up newspaper, cardboard and leaf/grass trimmings.  So, it looks a bit rustic right now.  This is a photo during the 'sunniest' time for this spot.  (The top left quadrant of the above photo).  It gets several hours of more sunny dappled shade and the remainder of the day partial shade.  It is never really full shade nor full sun.

The small tree is a calamondin.  Various greens have been planted over here to compare to the sunny garden.  These grow much slower, but they are growing.  Collards, broccoli and tatsoi do very well.  Green cabbage less so.  Dill was a bust.

I've a few things planted in these rings.  They are snap together edging that I form into rings.  This lets my plant in some improved dirt and a bit raised. 

This is the west side of the rotted oak round bed.

Just a few weeks ago (?!?*&^) how can that be?  I brought out our Shady Characters.  Which had grown up just a bit from the very first time I publicly mentioned my test area while talking about Living Fences.

Here is a nice list of Edible Plants for Shady Areas.