Mulching the beds and trees
I’m trying to spare you the relentless shots of brown. But mulch is a major theme of spring.
Luckily I can offer you a shot of Andrew’s mulching of his fruit trees which is not brown. He uses strimmings from the meadows around his cutting garden.
That’s one of his dogs – Juno – helping us with our garden tour.
It was a marvellous day and full of interest – even at this early stage in the growing season.
There is only a small window when you can get the mulch down in comfort without having a weed panic.
I have mulched the verbena bonariensis bed at the very top of the potager.
And to celebrate, I have taken the bubble wrap off the gorgeous red pots which I am minding for our friends Chris and Danielle.
The parsley is still growing merrily in the pots. And I can see some lilies poking their heads out of the soil.
I have decided not to mulch the entire bed: I can see thousands of little verbena bonariensis seedlings just emerging from the soil. So I’ll harvest those and put up with the inevitable weeds that accompanies any bare earth for a few months, until I can move the little plants.
And just in case you thought you had a surfeit of my potager beds all brown and dull. Here is the last one. Promise.
Tomorrow it is lily and dahlia planting. I ordered a huge number of bulbs from Andrew and have great plans for a summer of lilies and new dahlias. Joy.