I'm a true believer in the amazing power of mulch. I have seen first hand how fast it improves the soil. I have a section of my
yard that has been neglected for years. It's long and narrow, the north side is the back of the garage, the south side are various fruit
trees the ones closest to the area I'm talking about are apricot. East and west are open. A few years ago I decided to put down
wood chips, about a foot deep. A few months later I had some extra veggies that wouldn't fit in the garden, so I thought I'll just put them in the spot I now call my food forest want to be. First I could not believe how much the soil had already transformed. Dark, moist, and lots of worms, easy to dig . The veggies/fruit I planted that year grew and produced better than ever.
Last year there was a lot of personal changes for me, and lots didn't get done, including adding a new layer of wood chips. You could totally tell this year because it is weed
city. One section I want to plant melons I had my son scrape everything away down to the soil. My plan is to put the large black nursery pots that I will drill lots of holes in. Big
enough to let worms and soil life in, but keep the gophers out. (Having a terrible gopher problem) The pots will be above ground about a foot. I will cover the rest of the ground with
cardboard, then a layer of year, year and a half old wood chips, and top it off with fresh wood chips. The ground that I'm not planting in will not be distributed, just cardboard and wood chips on top to keep down the weeds.
I will try no matter what is going on to add wood chips every year from now on. Not only do the weeds take advantage, but when digging the holes for the pots I see the soil is already going back to what was. Dry ( it's only been uncovered a week, but it's been very windy). Hard to dig, no worms. My uneducated guess is the wood chips transform the top layer of soil very quickly, but it probably takes years to make a deeper move permanent impact. So the moral of the story is mulch deep, and maintain the mulch yearly.
Happy
gardening.
3
