I’ve had a lot of garden experiments happening and I feel confident in saying I can’t garden. I try and fail spectacularly.
2 years ago I added rotting bedding and manure from the barn to my garden rows and I really though that would be spectacular. All of that hay mixed up with poop had to be the perfect garden fertilizer/mulch. It was a decent mulch but I can’t say that anything I planted into it did better than anything else. A depressing failure.
I have lined my in ground garden with newspaper several times and then mulched over the top of that with wood chips. With the transport equipment we have (nothing more than my car) buying wood shavings in bags is the best I can do. This does very little to suppress the weeds and even though it has been breaking down over the years it seems to not be feeding the soil at all.
I get giant bags of leaves from my work. I happen to know they do not spray so I feel confident taking them. I will say that things grown in the leaves do do better than the other growing mediums, however the leaves have a very difficult time sticking around in our Wyoming winds.
So come spring I have a new plan, one I have resisted for ages. I am going to weed fabric. But more than that I have to do something to help my soil. I’m going to collect as much cow manure as I can (in rubber maid tubs, transported in my car). I plan to manure and then weed fabric. I might put wood shavings over the top of that. I’m undecided. I think it will be ugly but I am so hoping it helps me grow something, anything.
I will be sharing another post full of my greenhouse woes. It is not holding up this winter unfortunately. It was also a disappointment during the growing season. While things grew very large in it I did not get very much fruit at all, and that is with us