Northeast Gardening: Garden Projects #14, 4 by Pfg

Pfg wrote:
Wow, you've all been so busy!!! Patti, that's the most beautiful, lush spring planting I've ever seen! But everyone else has gotten so much work done already, too, all the gardens look amazing!

Last weekend was my first real outside working weekend. Mostly general cleanup, a little re-arranging of a few things, and the delivery of a full pallet of shredded pine mulch in 3 cu ft bags (45 bags). I use it over the season, not all at once, so the bags can be stacked behind the barn and are easier for me to deal with. Also DH can't drive over them, like he did the pile of mulch we had delivered a few years ago.

The big work was on Sunday. Our general-help outside guy let me have one of his workers for the day (@ $15/hr, not bad). He moved some huge daylily clumps from behind tall grasses, then moved the grasses back. He also cleared a huge section that had been cleaned up once before then let go again. The un-mulched section has a mix of grasses and other plants that have not emerged enough yet to identify, so I'm waiting to see what grows there before changing anything.

I weeded around the smaller plants, put down a few layers of newspaper, and mulched. That's when I discovered that the bags were full of shredded cedar, not pine. Grrrrr.....

The bags are marked Jolly Bee Pine, the same as the one left over from last year. But the contents are definitely not what I've been using on my beds. The pine breaks down nicely and allows for self-seeding, which I like in most areas. I think the cedar compacts and is a growth inhibitor, best for under trees and shrubs where you don't want anything else, right? I figure the daylily beds won't mind, maybe under the roses and box hedges... But I'm going to see if we can swap some bags out after they straighten out the problem with their supplier, or make some other kind of adjustment. I definitely don't want to use it on everything all summer.

The helper stayed 7 hours, I was out there for 10. I will never need a butt lift. ;-)

This message was edited Apr 30, 2013 12:52 PM