Pacific Northwest Gardening: Hey All, 1 by Soferdig

Soferdig wrote:
Good stories. Heidi, love the nursery that I must soon visit when I am free in Seattle.
I no longer use fabric under anything. I every spring before plants emerge I vaccum the beds of all of their mulch (bark), leaves, pine needles, left over perenials trimmings and anything the chickens have deposited. I do this with a debris loader which has an eight inch hose that rapidly sucks up all material and shreds it. Then I deposit my completed compost at an inch or two over the beds before I reverse the loader and blow the now mulch evenly over the bed making it look sweet and happy ready for the perenials to emerge into a world of worm infested nitrogen rich, bacterial enhanced soil to make even more compost for next year. It take me about two days to do my entire 1 1/2 acre of raised beds into the finely chopped mulch layer. If I need to I add some more shredded bark to "pretty up" the beds.