On Wed, 28 May 2003 10:28:16 -0400, DigitalVinyl
wrote:


Actually this brings up a question that I've been wondering about. If
you use mulch, do you scrape it away to work the soil or work it in as
dead material? Is that what happens with the reddish mulch that you
typical see in landscaping? Speaking long term, over years, If you
always work it in, don't you end up with too much soil mounding up as
you add mulch, compost, etc. yearly?


You would then have a 'raised bed' full of crumbly, dark,
rich soil - in other words, practically perfect growing
conditions. What's the problem with that?

We're creating 'special solar-retaining round raised beds'
at the cost of much labor and time this year. (We're
experimenting with 'tire gardening'.)

I'm already in love with raised beds, and would never go
back to anything else (except containers). The raised beds
have almost all the advantages of containers (except that
they're not movable).

It's a good thing our plants *are* in raised beds at the
moment, as the garden paths are covered by standing water
since all it's done here for a month is rain. But...the
plants are safe in their raised beds.

Hahaha, Evil StandingWater, we have defeated you! You are
vanquished!

I'm keeping a weather log in a little software program
called 'My Garden Journal' - I have a min-max thermometer
and a rain gauge. In the month of May so far, we have had
six sunny days and 22 rainy, wet, overcast, or
thunderstorm-y days. Four of the six sunny days were at the
very beginning of the month. This is a bit much!

Pat