Hi all
I would like to know what people's opinions are when managing and maintaining soil fertility.
I have in many of the ornamental gardens I manage for business decided to use permaculture/organic principles. I have top dressed bare soil with compost/mushroom compost, and then with woodchip mulch from my arborist contact.
Now, that woodchip mulch is going to take years to break down (despite containing some leaves and needles as well as bark/wood), but for fertility reasons want to be adding roughly 10mm - 20mm of compost each year for the next few years to increase nutrient content and soil organic matter (both active and passive organic matter).
I'm wondering if I can do a Paul Gauche and just top dress a fine layer of compost/manure over the woodchip mulch and water it well, or if this would rob the compost/manure of all of its nitrogen due to nitrogen drawdown.
I understand in a forest garden using fallen leaves rather than woodchips, then nitrogen drawdown isn't as big a problem, but woodchips can have a 500:1 carbon:nitrogen ratio, compared to 50:1 for leaves.
Some of these gardens are large and I don't know how possible it will be to move the mulch out the way before composting annually/biannually.
Kind regards,
Tom
