We finally planted! You can read what we learned about in our gardening classes, and what our garden looked like before we put on mulch. However we finally laid down the mulch and got some plants in the ground.
Our garden. Hay and wood chip mulch |
The cardboard helps to kill what is currently growing and provide a weed barrier. Next we put on our mulch. We bought some bales of hay from the local feed store and put it on approximately 6 inches thick. We went to a local tree trimmer to get wood chips. In theory they are supposed to deliver, but we wanted it that day so we went to their office and loaded it up into the trailer for free. A helpful hint, use a mulch fork* to help, it goes much faster and shovels are nearly useless.
Since we wanted to get a jump on things and it is about mid-season for us we purchased seedlings.
We purchased 2 kinds of tomatoes, 2 bell peppers, a jalepeno, field beans, garbanzo beans and a couple of different kinds of squash to plant.
To plant you simply push the mulch aside from where you want to put the plant and cut a hole in the cardboard. Add some good mushroom compost in the hole to fertalize your plant naturally. Then water well and make sure the mulch is surrounding the plant.
To protect the plants while they are getting settled in the ground we put edging* around them. If you've got some plastic bottles with a wide bottom you can use that instead. Just until the plant roughly doubles in size or gets larger than the ring.
You can see we started a second row. We've started cantelope, corn, eggplant and pumpkins from seeds that we'll start in that row. Wish us luck!
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