Gardening queries and general plans

ThePrettyDamned

Update: site will be cleared and something called "deep ripping" done. The site is effectively layers of excavated clay from building sites piled onto each other, and was used to store heavy machinery, cranes etc - this means from about 2 feet deep the clay is entirely compacted and does not allow water to pass at all. This should fix it, then they'll till the surface to level it and install some surface drainage.

I suspect it won't happen until at least the end of May which is when it was no longer flooded last year. Hopefully it'll be finished by mid June and I'll have time to get some strong pepper plants, tomatoes etc in, but if it's done later than July I've lost a season. 

Today, a rescue mission commences - I'm bringing raspberry canes back to put in a pot of old compost with a bit of new manure to try to keep them alive. I doubt I'll succeed. 

I have a good rosemary ill rescue also, and a Japanese wine berry plant I'll put in a climber pot on the balcony to live for a year. 

So it's a season of very limited, tiny balcony growing for me. 

ThePrettyDamned

Any advice as to how to preserve a bunch of raspberry canes for an extended period of time? I have 12 new ones. I was going to put them all together in one big pot half filled with compost to try to stop them growing too much, but keep them ticking over. 

yocky

Any advice on mulching and other spring based work to be done in the garden?

I had a complete garden do-over at the end of 2019 and some of the new plants were looking a bit sorry for themselves last year, possibly due to lack of sufficient irrigation during the dry spells. I'm keen to give everything a good start this year and it seems mulching with compost round the base of the plants is recommended but when I investigate mulching most info seems to be referring to spreading wood chips over the wider soil surface to stop weeds. Bit confused by the whole mulching concept tbh.

ThePrettyDamned

yocky said:

Any advice on mulching and other spring based work to be done in the garden?

I had a complete garden do-over at the end of 2019 and some of the new plants were looking a bit sorry for themselves last year, possibly due to lack of sufficient irrigation during the dry spells. I'm keen to give everything a good start this year and it seems mulching with compost round the base of the plants is recommended but when I investigate mulching most info seems to be referring to spreading wood chips over the wider soil surface to stop weeds. Bit confused by the whole mulching concept tbh.

Just a couple of inches thick of composted material around stuff is great. 

A mulch is just something on top of soil. So a black bin liner could be considered a mulch if it was weighed down to smother weeds. 

I'm still working on my compost heap (it's just starting to warm up now after the cold snap) and I'm hoping to spread it all in april/May. 

Unfortunately, due to the work being carried out, it'll all be dug in but that's fine - organic material is always good. Charles Dowding has loads of videos about mulching and no-dig gardening. 

yocky

Cheers. Yeah I have a compost bin that's been going for a year now. Still doesn't look ready to use, not sure it's getting hot enough.

So if I buy in compost for this year I'd put a couple of inches around the base of the shrubs and trees and that will provide both protection and nutrition? Or best to cover the compost with something else like wood bark to stop weeds?

Will check out Mr Dowding.

boogieman

Mulching with compost (especially peat based stuff) doesn’t provide a lot of nutrition really, it’s more to keep down weeds, improve the soil and hold in moisture to stop the soil drying out. If your plants have suffered over winter or from drying out last summer you’d be better off giving them some feed in spring (like, err, now). You can either dig some general fertiliser like fish, blood and bone in around the roots or use a liquid feed. (Monty Don swears by liquid seaweed feed, I’ve never used it though). It won’t hurt to put on mulch afterwards if the beds are prone to drying out. 

We’ve not long moved and the garden here is a decent size but hasn’t been looked after for a very long time. The lawn is 90% moss. There’s enormous fir hedges around two sides that have dragged all the moisture out of the soil and made it acidic. What plants are left look either sickly or rampantly overgrown. We’re having the hedges trimmed back or taken out completely, then we’ll prune stuff back and see what comes through in summer. Long term plan is to redesign the whole thing and start from scratch next year. 

yocky

Gah, mixed messages. 

This study I just came across implies that mulching is generally better than fertilising, even for increasing nitrogen...which is surprising.

https://www.gardenmyths.com/mulch-how-does-it-affect-soil/

ArchtopDave

Regarding mulch, I bought a small pallet load of Strulch last year, and have been happy with how it's worked, particularly in controlling weed regrowth. It's treated chopped up straw, developed by a guy at Leeds University. I was worried that it might blow away rather easily, but this hasn't been the case - you give it a good watering once you've spread it. 

Looks like I'm in a similar situation to @boogieman --- I took over a decent sized neglected flower garden a couple of years ago. Took me a while to work out just how much work needed to be done. The first year, I spent cutting the hedged periphery, which was no mean task in a garden measuring about 100 by 40 feet with hedges up to 8 foot high and 6 or 7 foot wide. I also tried to do bits of work all over the garden. This didn't really work out. Last year, I concentrated on about a third of the garden. I pruned woefully overgrown, but otherwise decent, bushes down to a reasonable size, and thoroughly weeded, manured/composted the flower bed in the area, replanted and put Strulch over the flower bed. 

I've made a start this year by having 3 multi trunked, ivy laden, Sycamores cut down a month ago. The tree stumps are being ground out tomorrow. I've got a Birch which has interesting multicoloured peeling bark, and a Snake Bark Maple to put in as replacements, both of which will, even when mature, will have a lighter leaf canopy than the Sycamores.  

ThePrettyDamned

yocky said:

Gah, mixed messages. 

This study I just came across implies that mulching is generally better than fertilising, even for increasing nitrogen...which is surprising.

https://www.gardenmyths.com/mulch-how-does-it-affect-soil/

The theory is to do with supporting a healthy ecosystem rather than providing fast-access soluble nutrients. My trial this year of a no dig bed versus dug bed showed no difference, but it was the first year. However, the dug bed has now become more flooded over winter than the no-dig bed, and (anecdotally) the no dig bed looks like it has more life. Definitely fewer weeds, too. 

Each year I'll just be adding another thin layer of compost on top and minimising any damage to worms, microorganisms, fungi and bacteria below.

I'm not an expert though - and there are probably just as many arguments against it... Gardening should be about making things easy, effective and fun for me.