I use alot of pine materials. I see two ways for you to go for
gardening/ landscaping:

1) I would till the material under for the value of the organic matter.
Pine mulch is fine. You're lucky! OM improves any soil immeasurably,
both in structure, moisture-moderation and fertility. It also comes to
buffer pH over time. But your garden will take a while to come into
balance. Here's one reason why:

As the organic material decomposes, it will tie up nitgrogen;
eventually it will release it back to the soil. But that means that
this year individual plants, fruit trees, etc. will benefit from
fertilization. I use the organics such as Plant Tone and Holly Tone,
but working a little 8-8-8 into the soil two weeks before you plant
might offer benefit. If you skip this last step, then I would only
topdress newly planted material with the 8-8-8-, to avoid burning. You
can work the "Tones" in directly with your planting soil, which is one
reason why I prefer it.

Backing up, in your initial tillage, I would apply quite a bit of lime.
To my eye, lime is almost more important than fertilizer, based on the
role it plays in "unlocking' nutrients and allowing them to become
available to plants. Unless you are planting blueberry bushes (which
will thrive at 4.9 ph), be sure to incorporate lime at the "heavy" rate
listed on the bag.

I don't know how it is with clay soil (I'm down here in the acidic,
piney sandhills - I till decomposed pine bark chips into my soil as a
soil conditioner), but I use rock phoshpate as my phosphorus source,
since it becomes available slowly over the years to plants, rather than
runs through. but here I also incorporate my phoshorus in my initial
tillage. (I'm pickier with fertility in my garden area, since I am
growing fresh food to eat, and so want maximum nutrition available to
plants.) Both lime and phosphorus move slowly through the soil - about
1" a year naturally - so in a new area, I make sure to incorporate
those two items at the outset.

After I had my my newly-tilled area, I would submit a soil sample. You
may want to do that initially anyway, for comparison/improvement
purposes, but in my area I have a pretty good feel for what the soil
around here is going to need for vegetable production (I'm a market
gardener). Then based on the results, I would add in what is deficient.
Over time, in this sand, as the phosphorus content builds up, I back
off the middle number and concentrate on N and K, and making sure the
trace minerals are available. I do this through lots of compost, by the
way, and compost is... broken down organic material. ;-)

2) For vegetables, the simplest way might be to build raised beds in
your sunniest area, bring in good soil and compost, already
ph_balanced, and have at it. Use the pine mulch for your walkways, as
weed suppressant. In this case, I suggest the "Square Foot gardening"
book. Google it - there's also a website. I think the author talks
about his soil mix online.

Best of luck!.


On Jan 16, 6:23 am, "cd" wrote:
About 50% of our lot was thick with mostly pine trees under which was
left as a natural area. We just had many of the pines removed leaving
some large open natural areas full of pine needles, leaves and big
mounds of pine mulch from the stump grinding.

We plan to do a lot of landscaping and put in a garden now that we get
enough sunlight to grow more than just mushrooms and moss. But I'm
wondering what the best first step is to convert the natural areas to
productive gardening soil. My wife thinks we should just spread out the
mounds of pine mulch and mix it with the natural debris. But I'm
worried that all the pine needles will leave a soil that is much too
acidic. I'm thinking we should rake up all the pine needles first.

What is the best way to turn a natural area into a gardening area? I
would appreciate any advice or pointers to information about what to do
in a situation like this.