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When to water a sheetmulched bed?

 
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So realising that time was slipping away from me, and I had been procrastinating instead of gardening.

Yesterday I thought I'd put in a sheetmulched bed, as shown in Geoff Lawton's 'Soils' DVD. Fortunately, being a farmer, I have plenty of large round hay bales, so I used one of the older dumpier looking ones for this project. I soaked the cardboard, and the layers of hay as I went, so there's a fair bit of moisture in it at the moment. My question is, how do I decide when to water it?

 
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That would probably depend on what you plant. You can always pull back the mulch to check the soil moisture. Otherwise I would advise watering well until germination and then tapering off thus training your plants to look for their own water. They will develop a deeper root system with infrequent deep watering versus frequent shallow watering.
 
Phil Hawkins
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I have planted seedlings, so the they are germinated already.
 
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Are the seedlings planted through the card into the native soil, or on top? If the latter, they dry out really quickly.
One way or another, I find transplanted seedlings need regular watering (like every couple of days), until they're settled in.
I'd only water the actual plants: the sheetmulch should do a good job of maintaining moisture in the soil, and in my experience, it will only really start to break down when the autumn rains come.
 
Phil Hawkins
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Thanks Leila. The mulch was damp about two or three inches down, and that's about how far the soil level is for the plants. There is problably 8-10" of store-bought compost/potting soil above the cardboard (in 4-6" diameter "tubes" I burrowed through the mulch.. The soil under the cardboard isn't terrible, but was suffering from being bare through the heat of summer.
 
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