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01-07-2004, 02:03 AM

(Jay Chan) wrote in
m:

I'm using large pine bark nuggets and haven't noticed a problem with
that. What kind of mulch are you using?

I use shredded cedar chips mulch. Seem like large nuggets that you use
work better than shredder chips because they last longer. I even found
two groups of termintes in the shredder cedar chips after I had put
them in the flower garden for just two years. This is one of the
reason why I want to remove the mulch (but I keep delaying doing this
for one thing or the others). I probably need to remove them and put
them in a compost pile (that I should have done one year ago).

Do you think termintes will bother large pine bark nuggets? How long
do you think the large nuggets will remain effective in keeping
termintes out?

I haven't the slightest idea. I didn't know termites would eat or live
in cedar (or I could be thinking of something else). I did find some
termites in a buried tree stump far behind the house, but haven't seen
any in the mulch. [Dumb question: are you sure they are termites?]

I used large pine bark nuggets because they are relatively heavy (so wind
doesn't blow them away as much), large (so they don't slip through cracks
in the fabric), have less surface area (compared to equivalent volume of
other mulch) and most importantly, they were on sale. As far as pests,
I've seen slugs underneath wet nuggets, so you may reconsider if you grow
stuff that slugs like to eat. They don't seem to bother my plants.

I don't add stuff to my flower bed, but I guess you could make more
flaps next to your plants and stick stuff in a pile under them. If
you're feeling the need to mix things in, well that's another story.

Sooner or later, you will need to put amendment to the soil, right?
How do you get away from doing this?

Come to think of it, I did dig a hole next to a rose bush and buried a
couple of banana peels (potassium, etc) down there. I'm not really into
growing flowers, so if I needed a specific amendment, I probably wouldn't
know it. When I put in the bed, it was overgrown with all sorts of
stuff, but I just covered it with landscape fabric, so quite possibly
that old stuff has been serving as compost (or slug food) for the last
few years. I'm pretty happy as long as the flower bed doesn't look like
the ditch next to the road and I don't have to weed it constantly.

If you are insane, you can bury a gradually perforated pipe under the
bed. When you want to fertilize, drop your fertilizer down an access
tube and flush it in with water. Check out tips on using prefabricated
perforated drainage pipes to abate soil clogging. However, some of those
methods (drain sock) may or may not prevent your fertilizer from getting
out.

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