Mulching Now? 6 July 2020 at 6:40PM in Greenfingered MoneySaving 4 replies 162 views

aylithuk

So I’ve made a rather large bed in the corner of my garden that gets full on sunshine from 3ish to 7pm. I’ve plants all my  perennials but they were all 2 litre babes with a couple of 3ltrs thrown in, as I wanted them to grow into the bed. What I’ve noticed on the are soil it bakes a lot so I wondering if I should mulch now rather than waiting until September etc 

only have one one tiny patch of  raimbow chard growing for eating as much as fitting my colour scheme. 

Any help would be well received 😀

-taff

yes, mulch now. Mulching is not just for feeding, it's for keeping the moisture in the ground.

twopenny

You really need to wait for some prolonged heavy rain for the reason taff gave.

Don't know where you are and what the weather has been but I have the same problem and although we've had what you'd think was a decent amount of water it's still dried out very quickly. It got so dry in May it's never really soaked again so I've resigned myself to watering and will chuck loads of compost and some sand/gravel to try and open up the soil.

One way to tell is to dig a bit in a couple of areas to see if there is moisture under the crust.

Another may be to shade the roots. I'm growing an annual weed beneath the tomatoes and that seems to be helping a lot. A water permeable membrane might help too. You could cover it with compost to improve the appearance and then just tip the compost onto the soil later

Catsacor

Perennials though, certainly cottage garden plants, like a drier site, they don't like their feet being too damp/wet so not too sure about mulching which keeps the soil below damp.
Having 4 hours of sunbaking isn't the same as a full day so it's not going to suffer too much moisture loss, still not too convinced here.

In my gardens i only mulch shrubby and tree areas and leave the perennial sections free of it.

aylithuk

Thanks all. I’ll wait until we’ve had some prolonged rain. I am not growing anything major. Some Lancanthemum, couple of Alliums, 3  hydrangea and salvias 

rest of the bed is taking up with Swiss Chard 😁