Mulch

[halleone]

Originally Posted by ArcherB

Last year, I amended and worked one of my two beds and thought I'd try the "no till" method in the other. In the bed that was amended, I add about a yard of composted rabbit manure and a year's worth of compost (grass clippings and kitchen scraps mostly) and worked it all down about six inches. In the other bed, I did nothing but pull weeds. Both beds received about six inches of the Christmas tree mulch. I received about 125 lbs of tomatoes from the bed that was worked and about 20 lbs from the bed that was not. Also keep in mind that the "no-till" bed is on the north side of my yard which is surrounded by a wooden fence. That means that early in the season, the "worked bed" is in shadow as it's on the south side next to a wooden fence. Usually, the North bed does much better.

Sadly, I experienced a similar result in my garden. Last Fall I put down a heavy mulch of newspaper, dried leaves, and grass clippings on top of my 20 beds, as opposed to my usual practice of turning them under, as no-till suggests. It was a waste of good leaves and time. They basically just blew away over Winter with our high winds, I had to pick up newspaper bits from all over the yard, and my soil is no better for it. My soil is heavy clay and needs all the help it can get. This Fall I will go back to digging the leaves into the soil as before. Lesson learned.

[COMPOSTER]

I have created 3 new beds using wood mulch. 2 are about 3 inches of wood mulch on top of cardboard and news paper. I then put a 1/2 whisky barrel with a tomato plant on each them. They are segregated from my other tomato plants and I plan to save seeds from these plants. The 3rd was grass clippings mixed with year old leaves about 3 inches thick, then news paper on top of that and then 3-4 inches of wood chip mulch on top of the news paper. This area will probably get a few containers of plants also. At the very least these areas have created attractive areas for containers that add vertical diversity to the structures of my main garden area. At best they are going to be very fertil, productive beds in the future. At this point I have not used any high nitrogen material to hasten the composting of the wood mulch. All 3 areas were created with the intention of having wood mulch beds to plant in for 2014. I love using local available resources that others see as waste!

Glenn