How do you mulch yours?

[digiveg]

If you see a sacred cow, poke it.

[Christine]

I was bit flummoxed by your poll, too, as I am using chipped wood (provided free on our allotment as the council dumps it on the car park) to cover over the area at the top of the allotment - yep! I finally cleared all the brambles - that I intend to put the plastic greenhouse on over winter. It provides a good shelter for slugs and is slightly acidic (because most of it seems to be coniferous) so not really suitable for growing areas, except fruit bushes, I believe (gosh! I hope I've got that right - they're too expensive to risk)
A woman who walks her dog on the allotments very kindly got me two bags of raw horse manure with no straw and told me I could just put it straight onto the beds so I've done that and covered it with black plastic. Somewhat confounded by finding that something has dug through the plastic apparently to get at the manure. What would that be? Foxes? and why? No dogs, as plots are secure with hedging etc...

[hedgewizard]

Could be badgers looking for slugs - it'd be the sheeting making them curious in that case, since slugs tend to shelter under it.

Nothing confusing about the poll, your woodchips come under "OTHER" but thanks for the info!

I'm a happy man today as I now have two suppliers of free rotted down horse muck. One in bags which are always there, and one who can give me a couple of tons at a time (if I bung a neighbouring farmer a couple of bottles of wine he'll bring it up and dump it - right on my lawn probably!) This'll let me compost next year's beans'n'peas beds, the new asparagus bed, the strawberry beds, and enough left over for the peach and kiwi planting stations, easy!

[PurpleDragon]

Peach? How are you doing peach? Yummm - hadnt thought of growing them

[hedgewizard]

Up against a south facing wall, but I am prepared for an annual battle against late frosts and peach leaf curl so I'm going to have to rig some kind of sheeting-and-battens approach I think to cover them from first frost to last. It'll all be on my blog (eventually)

[caithnesscrofter]

I'm still a part timer on my land until February.. so, here in the city.. I tried out doing this in a small strip bed in my garden..

It's about a meter wide and 8 meters long. Picked out any large stones and collected comfrey leaves on the old train line by my house. Laid them on top of the soil.. then laid cardboard down on top of that and then covered with compost. Punched holes in the cardboard for plants or used a knife to make slits for seeds. then layered on top and around plants and seed strips hedge clippings and brown grass. Worked a treat.. had a few weeds coming on the edges of the cardboard.. but, that was it. Was quite an intensively planted wee bed too and everything has done well except a few things that the slugs got. Had mint, borage, artichoke, rhubarb, two squash plants, feverfew, two green pepper plants, a few strawberry plants and a dwarf apple tree which sadly died. spinach, chard and two raspberry canes.

what and when is everybody planting green manure crops.. alfalfa sounds like a good one to me anybody ever tried it?

[hedgewizard]

No, sorry - this year I used red clover in the summer to fill any vacant spots, and now I'm using hungarian grazing rye for the same thing. The clover's good because it fixes nitrogen, but you can't sow it this late. Larger areas where I want to build fertility are currently getting forage peas.

I've been reading the results of a member's experiment in The Organic Way where they got everyone to try a number of insect attracting plants - corn marigold, coriander, fennel, phacelia. The last one was most popular, because although it's really quite tall at 1m, it's easy to grow, has a long flowering period and can be used as a green manure. I might try that next summer.