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| Early blooming Japanese magnolia |
One of today’s projects was adding garden soil mix to some of the raised beds to top them off. We also began to remove composted wood chips from garden pathways. As mulch in garden pathways decomposes, it turns into good soil which builds up against the raised beds. Soil tests have shown that this soil has an ideal pH, so we add it to our garden beds. In addition, the buildup of soil can deteriorate the wood on raised beds, so removing the soil, adding it to the beds and putting down new cardboard and mulch is something we do every couple of years.
We usually recommend against using landscape cloth to deter weeds, but in one particular area underneath our original arbor, where nutsedge was maddeningly persistent, we decided to try landscape cloth. It has worked quite well. The trouble is that the landscape cloth is not safe to walk on because it can be slippery, especially on the gentle slope where our arbor is located, so we add mulch. Even if mulch is not added, eventually soil and decomposed organic matter build up on top of the landscape cloth and weeds again began to proliferate.
So we removed all the decomposed mulch from the top of the landscape cloth, put down new cardboard and mulch and we’re ready for visitors at spring open house coming up in May. We also weeded in the 4-H garden, which is totally covered by landscape cloth. Weeds there have either come through the professional grade landscape cloth, or soil has built up on top and weeds are growing.
Glenn and Peter are making good progress on the grape arbor.
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| Refreshing the mulch under the arbor. Because of the persistence of Nutsedge, both landscape cloth and cardboard are used under the mulch |
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| Newly mulched and ready for traffic |
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| Progress on the grape arbor. We’ll soon be ready to plant the vines. |
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| Elephant garlic survived the freezes |
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| Topping up planting beds |
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