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I love mulching, and my soil loves it too. Not that I'd admit this in public, but I think it's partly the lazy gardener in me that chooses mulching over digging - it's a far easier way to incorporate bulky organic material into soil.Yes, there's a

I'm rather proud of the plot at the moment. It's weeded, fed, mulched and manured, the potatoes are chitted and in, and the beds are ready. Best of all, I've just top dressed my paths with lovely wood chips, which set the whole thing off to a 'T

them well watered in dry weather.Clean straw or synthetic mulch fabricProtective nettingSeep hose (optional)April - June 20 minutesharvest from June to JulyWeed around your strawberry plants and remove any dead or dying leaves. Lift the foliage

thing is just how you can ignore them and they'll still flourish. Despite my heavy clay soil I've just left them in the ground, and they've grown up again every summer. If I was more conscientious I would have spread a mulch of compost over the area

are no longer brown, but covered with the tufts of emerging bluebell leaves.In the garden the mulch (about which I wrote the other day) is no longer a quiet brown duvet over everything but is now pierced by alliums, anthriscus, aconites and loads of other plants

with the stuff, every shrub and fruit bush mulched with a thick layer, and still the overflowing buckets continued to come!I'm a keen home composter - who isn't these days - but I do still resort to buying in mushroom compost from time to time. If I lived near a

I do love the garden in October - especially in the sunshine. In the early Spring it is all about hope and waiting: all that mulch and neatly tidied brown border. A month or so later and there is green stuff and bulbs all over the place. Then we

and groundsel. The weedkiller, aminopyralid, has been ingested by farm animals and hasn't broken down. It's still present in the manure, which, when laid as a mulch or incorporated into soil, can affect garden crops.Symptoms to look out for include distorted

then run the mower up and down to collect them (thanks by the way, to my son Luke, 11, for taking the photo). The great thing about using a mower rather than simply raking them up is that they get chopped up in the process. I remember the late Geoff

to chalk up 15 of my 124 target actions. These are mostly by the simple expedient of not cutting the grass, not winter deadheading, clearing out the pond when I repaired it and by having more than my fair share of thickets.The thickets are obviously paying