Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Mulching Tip

Mulching is not exactly my favorite garden task and I especially hate when it doesn't stay in the flowerbed and spills out onto my sidewalk and pathways.

After winters constant freezing and thawing, the soil has worked it's way up to the top of my edging. And the bricks sink a little as well. I can put mulch on that but it's going to keep washing out on top of my bricks all summer.
Here is where one of my favorite garden tools come in. A hammer.

Using the claw part of a hammer, dig a trench in the soil one to two inches deep all along your sidewalk or pathway.

Yes, my trusty hammer has seen it's better days, but it still gets the job done!

While I'm doing this I take some of the soil and put it under the bricks that need straightening up. That claw also works great getting some of the smaller weeds and those pesky maple seedlings out.

Then fill it in with mulch or in my case Bull Country Compost. I prefer this dark organic compost made locally, over mulch because I have very bad soil and it really helps amend it. I mix some of this in with my plantings as well.


Happy Gardening

9 comments:

  1. what a great way to fix a problem!

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  2. That looks lovely. You did such a nice job. I am trying to clean up the Maple seeds now. Literally hundreds of thousands. If I manage to finish this will be the last year I can do this as it's really getting too much trying to pick them all up.

    Cher Sunray Gardens

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  3. How beautiful it looks. Thanks for the tip, I still have lots of work to do in the garden - this may help make the job a little easier.

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  4. Your compost mulch is so wonderful. I should have known about this and used it for this old clay soil here. The beds always look so wonderful after they are all mulched in. I love your use of rocks for plant markers. What a wonderful idea Pearl! I may have to borrow that one. LOL!

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  5. I wondered how you remembered all those difficult plant names. You just gave away your secret. What a nifty idea. Now come do mine. After all you enjoy gardening. I just like the end result.

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  6. You have an amazing garden, Pearl. The weeds are taking over some of ours ---and even with two of us working at it, those weeds are still among us!!!!! ha

    Thanks for sharing..
    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  7. Thanks everyone.

    Carolyn, I only do that for the hostas. I like to know the names of them and I have so many I would never remember them all, and those little tags always get lost. I like stones anyway so it works until I come up with something better.

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  8. Hi Carolyn, So glad you stopped by my blog and thanks for becoming my first Ohio friend in my "friend from every state" goal. We love Ohio and have spent a good bit of time there riding bike trails! There are some great ones! I look forward to learning more about you through your blog. My husband is the gardner in our house - he loves digging in the mulch!!

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  9. Pearl, you're blog is wonderful! What a good tip for the uneven stone in the landscape. You have such a gift in gardening and in photography and I get to ejoy all the beauty without doing the work. All I need to do is see the beauty unfold as you post pictures on your blog.......love it!

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