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Monday, June 25, 2012

Adding 10 cubic yards of mulch, top soil, and compost to the gardens

Last week I ordered 10 cubic yards of mulch, top soil, and compost with an even amount of each material to my gardens. It took me about 30 hours total to use it up, and my main project was a flower bed full of mostly tree & itoh peonies, 2 musa basjoo banana trees, and 3 Asian pear trees.

Here's about half the pile as I've already used up the other half to improve the soil in my new flower bed.



I dug out around 50 holes almost 2ft wide and 2ft deep to prepare the bed for planting, and I ended up trying to get a 50/50 mix of top soil and compost in the holes.

Here's the project completed. I might add some solar lights and stones later on to make it look better.


















Here's a close up on some of the peonies.

















Here's a flashback on how these guys looked about a month ago, and last week when they were still in their pots. Some of them might flower next year. Half of them were already developing their own tree peony roots when I planted them which is a very good sign as most of the root growth is not supposed to occur until August and September.


I kept some of the smaller ones in their pots and sunk into the ground, while a few of the other ones remained un-planted until I decide where I want them.

Here are my Asian pear seedlings from smallest to biggest. The smallest is on its 1st year, the middle is on its 2nd and the largest is on its 3rd year.









Here are the 2 musa basjoos already around 10ft tall. The bigger one is 6.5 in diameter at the base, and has a pup. All the pups were removed and given away last fall so they only emerged as 1 corm each this year.









Here's a couple of the musa mekong giant banana trees which look just like the musa basjoo at this point. I used a mixture of top soil, compost and mulch for these 2.

I had lots of extra mulch so I added them to the daylilies, lilies and sempervivum beds. The purpose here is to keep out the weeds and retain moisture because I don't water these plants.














I used a mixture of top soil and mulch for the fruit trees and shrubs.













I tried to use mostly compost and top soil for some of the vegetables. The compost makes the mixture much darker.
























3 comments:

  1. I definitely need to lay a new layer of topsoil on my garden. My plants aren't looking so good and I want to perk them up. I'm hoping a new layer of topsoil will help them thrive.

    Susan Hirst | http://www.randlessandandgravel.net

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  2. I think any kinds of organic materials will help including mulch, tree leaves etc.

    ReplyDelete