The advantages of mulch on a vegetable garden.

[peter]

Mika, I intended no rudeness, implied or otherwise.

Being unaware of your personal circumstances, just as you are unaware of mine, I did VERY clearly set my context by stating it is what I witness as an "allotment problem" and a personal bugbear, it was not aimed as "do as I do" more advice to "think before following fashion" and spending lots of money.
As for "considerable resources", I wish.
If everyone tried to consider every circumstance in every reply there would either be no posts or screeds in every reply.

[MikA]

Thanks for the kind words Nature's Babe. I know that one person's "productive" would be another's disaster, however all we need is sufficient for the 2 of us. My major gripe is that the beds are too small, as is the greenhouse, to grow the variety I'd like properly . Still, this year is a learning experience and I'll probably change what goes where next year. The 3 bed rotation is no more since the herb bed was purloined.

edited to add smilies

[MikA]

Peter

apology accepted . However I think within the context of the forum as a whole, the name is Kitchen Garden - not Allotment Garden.
Maybe we should tailor our responses to address both except where the context is clear, or try to ascertain the context where the advice may vary and then respond accordingly.

[peter]

Maybe we should tailor our responses to address both except where the context is clear, or try to ascertain the context where the advice may vary and then respond accordingly.

Responses can have a context as well.

Now that your garden and aims for it are explained, better advice may flow.

Being in what sounds like a similar soil situation to you, heavy Hertfordshire clay, I can give you some advice on two related issues I have experienced.
Blood fish & bone in soil misleads foxes to think there is buried meat in the bed and they dig in.
In a drought on clay foxes will choose the, literally, softer option and dig into your fertile bed soil after worms and bugs. One of my allotment neighbours had a fox empty an entire bed, less a few shovelfuls. It was only a bought in kit for a 1m x 2m bed about a foot deep, she'd used mostly bags of cheapo gp compost to try and get good carrots and has now had to use a chickenwire tent to prevent a repeat performance.

I have a dozen large (four foot plus high) blue plastic drums holding up a terrace on my allotment and use these for carrots, parsnips, lettuce and strawberries, the contents are a bit of a mix:

Leafmould
Tree shreddings
Horse manure
Soil from the excavation to fit them into the bank comprises at least 75%
Couple of 25L Homebase topsoil bags added to the top eighteen inches

all well mixed together.
Despite regular annual additions over the first three years the contents settled about six inches each year, which is inconvenient for the strawberries, the settling has started to slow down now. I think this has been due to the height involved combined with both the fluffage of dug soil and the amount of organic material added to try and improve drainage. My initial attempt with one barrel and plot soil had set like concrete, which was why I tried shreddings from my other neighbour (tree surgeon). The fox tries to empty these barrells, he hops up the foot or so from the bank top and digs away, a curtain-wall of chickenwire held inside the lip of the barrell by two foot canes keeps him out.

If I was to do this again I would use sharp sand instead of tree shreddings, but that would add to the cost at around £2 per bag and they are big barrells. My base soil breaks up nicely if autumn dug & winter weathered, but sets in lumps otherwise, even the rotovator leaves it in golfball sized lumps lots of water gets it friable, but then it settles and sets again.

[Nature's Babe]

Mika, with regard to your third bed... in my garden I have a lot of my herbs in graded size stacked pots, it works best when the pots are narrow at the bottom and wide at the top, start with a large wide pot, then stack a medium in the first then a smaller one. the larger one at the bottom holds my mint gives plenty of rootrun, next pot has marjoram and oregano, thyme in the top one, this conserves water too as each pot drains into the one below. Other ideas a ladder of troughs against a wall for herbs, or hanging containers, all these keep the herbs off the soil and clean to use. Any one of these ideas might release your third bed back to use for veggies.

[MikA]

Peter

I initially used Clay Breaker (gypsum) on the clay which purports to change the chemical composition of the soil improving the structure. This worked ok and then lots of grit and home made compost has made quite fine soil.



Nature's Babe - things won't change this year - there are some ornamentals e.g. snowdrops in there plus lots of ornamental alliums and elephant garlic as well as herbs. We'll hopefully sit down this winter and discuss what has worked and what to change.


On the subject of mulch - I have just dug out the top few inches of the compost heap and it is gorgeous stuff but I do know it will contain lots of seeds as the heap doesn't get warm enough. So can I use it directly now on my bed with the peas, dwarf beans and 2 courgettes already in? There has been some settlement as in Peter's drums so there is an inch to fill. The blackbirds will almost certainly annoy me by throwing it everywhere looking for worms, Ill just have to go around and pick up as much as possible to keep the paths tidy.

[Nature's Babe]

Remember raised beds are a recent fad,

Peter, I never followed fashion, though I have in the past often been copied. My new beds have neither plastic or wooden boards though they are still raised beds and they suit my lifestyle, soil and garden. It does feel a little as though this thread has been derailed by folk who favour other methods of gardening, surely there is room for all methods and ideas here, I would not presume to tell those who favour double digging and flat beds that they are wrong or those who use chemicals rather than organic, surely it is personal choice for each individual? For me it is not a fashion fad but a conscious personal choice, I have an open mind and am prepared to adapt and change my ideas when something so obviously works well in my own garden.

[Nature's Babe]

MikA, sounds like good compost, I try to be sure i don't put seeding weeds on the compost but weed them out before that stage if possible, then I get nice surprises from self sown seeds, like the turks turban squash that grew in my potatoes and i find tomato and tomatillo and chard seedlings popping up all over. I kinda look on most weeds as friends, they help loosen soil and as long as they are not allowed to seed I leave them on the soil or into the compost to dry, decay and add humus. If your plants are already growing I would go ahead, any weeds will have to compete with the plants for light anyway, I guess it depends how much and what sort of weed seeds might be in there.

[Johnboy]

MikA,
You have put yourself into a different category. The people I am talking about are young and fit and read the glossy magazines and not the common sense literature available. And even one of my own daughters has beds raised to 18" against my advice then had the cheek to ask if she could take some of my hard won top soil to fill their raised beds.
I have a wealth of top soil here but I said a resounding NO to her.
It has taken me many years to get my soil into the condition it is.
For the normal healthy young people there is no need for unnaturally raised beds.
I have two comparatively young men who now do my digging (as of this year) and they do my planting. In return they get to use all the resources available here and I grow all the plants that are needed to their specifications.
I am getting a little long in the tooth and I also have family matters that need constant attention.
JB.

[Nature's Babe]

Good for you Johnboy, sometimes our kids have to learn the hard way, to have land is a privilidge isn't it, we are guardians of the soil for future generations, hopefully leaving it better than we found it
my soil has improved quite rapidly, we have only been here 6 years and it was a wildernesss at first - it took a year to clear it, hadn't been touched for twenty years and was a mass of brambles, the pergola was only just standing propped up by overgrown shrubs and weeds, the pond was a solid mass of roots and the gate hung on one hinge, we didn't even know we had a well till we had cleared the area. I am looking forward to further years of continuing improvement, though looking at the size and condition of my greens it is difficult to see how it can get better.

[Mike Vogel]

For what it's worth, returning to the original issue, I mulch with compost from my dalek bins but that only covers a modicum of the plot. Elsewhere I rot down leaves and manure and use that. For the winter I cover it all with cardboard or newspaper [which I also use to "earth" up spuds sometimes] and then sow or plant veg through the cardboard. My beans have germinated beautifully in soil which was still moist in the drought, while the others are complaining that theirs haven't. Many plotholdsers are now pumping water out of the ground, while I have only used half of the water I stored over winter.
Re raised beds: I try to build up the next year's carrot bed with leafmould, but unless I am there to water the early seeds I get hardly any carrots. But at home we had our kitchen refirred and I took some of the old units and filled them with spent compost and leafmould, to about a foot in depth.. I've never had such success germinating carrots andI don't suppose I will again.

[Nature's Babe]

Sounds like this worked well for you Mike I guess mulch works, whatever you use it certainly helps to conserve water. That was a novel use for your kitchen units. I mulched my early and second early potatoes too with straw and the spuds grew through it no problem, it helped keep them moist through the drought, most folk think it encourages slugs but it's only when the soil is too dry that they go down for the moisture in the potatoes, they look really healthy at the moment, and the first ones are a good size despite the long drought we suffered.

[the custodian]

i have been composting for 2 years now and using the compost dug in on my veg patch my soil was very hard clay at first even the rotavator bounced off it but with some hard graft and a painful back i believe i have now cracked it as i have a nice fine tilth, although the idea of the no dig method appeals to me i can hear my grandad calling to me from the heavens saying " you only get what you put in son, you work hard for the veg and the veg will see you right" im only 37 and the exercise does me some good.

[Nature's Babe]

Hi Custodian Just tell your Grandad, you put on compost and mulch and the worms do the digging for you, you are still feeding the soil and leaving it better than you found it ! When the worms do it they leave wormholes and wormcasts, great for plant nutrition and soil drainage, a spade or rotovator doesn't it just chops up the poor worms!

[Nature's Babe]

Well I just found another very useful mulch, on our local freecycle 11 sheep fleeces, I just replied hoping i will be the lucky recipient, I will use it as mulch around tender plants slugs and snails hate it! Might come in useful as frost protection too.