Mulching the herb and asparagus beds

Now this feels odd.  The herb garden right beside the bread oven was one of the first beds I made.  It was a mess of unwanted shrubs and weeds. And I turned it into a herb garden.

Last year it had a first overhaul after doing quite well for six years. And now it’s back to its bare bones of sage and bulbs (alliums and lilies) and euphorbia and geums.  All dry garden plants which can withstand a drought.

So why on earth does it have a thick and fluffy layer of brown compost around the plants? It usually has a more acceptable covering of gravel.

Answer, needs must. I have sacks of compost. I do not have any spare gravel. I need to order another two cubic metres of the lovely gravel from the local builders’ merchants

But for ‘local’ that means a delivery charge of almost sixty euros as we are so far away.  And besides, I’ve run out of funds.  My priority in spring is to get this compost onto the vegetable beds and a few other areas which are crying out for a good weed suppressant cover.

So once I had thoroughly weeded this herb bed and planted some dozen new purple sage plants and added more lilies I knew something had to go down.  It looks ridiculously pampered and rich.  But hopefully it will do the trick of keeping the more rampant annual weeds at bay.  And I’ll gravel in the autumn.

The new asparagus bed had the same treatment. But this time I didn’t mind giving the soil a bit of a feed with this compost. This area has been stony and unworked for dozens of years, so all the goodness helps.

But it is asparagus season at the moment, and friends will come by and help themselves to the emerging spears. And I need to keep this extension of the bed safe from the knife. The spears need to grow on unmolested until next year at least.

So how to I politely warn people not to cut these emerging spears? Say it in stones. It’s one thing I have in abundance.

And I used up three of my precious mulch sacks on an eyesore that bothers no one but me. This is a long skinny area in front of the house that has been a building site for so many years.  And a repository of all flood damage and random bits of gravel and stones.  If I had small slaves I could make them pick up the gravel and put in a bucket and cover the herb garden. Instead, there’s just me. And I did pick up a few buckets of gravel stones from among this mess of just emerging grass seeds and larger rocks.

For now it has a fine covering of lovely dark mulch which gives the illusion I’m making a replanting effort. And I have recklessly taken away the don’t park here barrier or river stones. If all goes well, it won’t get ruined or churned up or run over for at least a few months and I might get a grassy verge once again.