Been a productive couple weeks in procuring raw materials… tons of leaves, 3 truckloads of horse manure, 4 yards of mushroom soil, and around 30 yards of wood chips. My garden will be good to go next year!
Now… who wants to help me turn the manure pile and spread woodchips?
It’s like money in the bank! Fall is a great time for this stuff, I have also been bringing in similar materials and building new beds, mulching out existing plantings.
Yep, I’ve got a mulch like crazy and start prepping my hardy kiwi bed for spring.
For anyone that wants organic matter and hasn’t done so, call your local tree services and lawn care companies. Two phone calls got me the rows seen below. Left side of photo, somewhere between 75 and 150 yards of wood chips I’m guessing closer to 150. Right side, easily that much leaf litter, probably more. Far right 5-10 yards more wood chips being delivered 10 minutes ago.
When I set up my orchard, I intentionally left a huge gap between rows to let these guys to drive in and turn around with ease. So far, the only incident was your’s truly backing into (not over, thank god!) a tree cage with a trailer of manure. (No damage… tree was young enough to bend and bounce back.)
Anywho… last year’s chips were spread along my rows, 1-2” deep, 6’ wide. In total, close to an acre got mulched this way this fall and about the same last spring. I’m spreading chips thick enough to ‘do something’ and thin enough for grasses to pop through. It seems to be working. Last spring’s chips will get rototilled in before adding more chips next spring. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Man, that’s a lot of chips!
Yep! My initial soil test came back classified as “mineral” soil with seemingly negligible organic matter. The joys of living on glacial till!
You can’t be doing this by hand can you? I guess with time it’s possible
I wish I had what it takes to do that by hand! Instead, I use orange muscle that runs on diesel.
