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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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.