flower garden soil

I live on a plot of 9 acres. Most of it has never been lived on or used in any way, not in the last 100 years anyway. So you can imagine the black soil and rotted leaves, etc. I decided to put some beds in back of the house, but all we have there is red clay.
So, I went out to the "forest" of oak, etc. raked offf all the top new leaves in some places and got to the stuff underneath. Did I do the wrong thing. Do you think I moved bugs, etc. All I know is it is the softed, blackest mulch and soil I've ever seen.
Thanks for any help

Sounds like a gold mine to me! I'd dig it into the soil that was already in the bed and mix well so that you don't create different layers in your garden. Hopefully you moved earthworms in with the mulch and soil:)

Now all you need is to go to Home Depot and rent a tiller to till it all in. If you are planting acid loving plants such as Rhododendrons or azaleas, or any other broad leaf evergreens, you can even add the oak leaves as they are a natural soil acidifier. Is it possible to mail me a cubic yard of that stuff?

Lorraine - you have probably made about a hundred people green with envy! Oh for 100 year old mulch! You will have a glorious garden! Be sure to come back and post pics when you get it going.

Well, I guess I'll be the one to say it wasn't a good idea. Reason being, I did the same thing last year and won't ever do it again, ever. My back yard hadn't been touched for 60+ years and needed some good dirt so I moved a dozen wheel barrows full of rich, wonderful, dirt to the front of my property. In the back and being in the woods weed seed has a very difficult time to sprout. Well, I just moved rich, wonderful, dirt loaded with insane amounts of weed seed into full sunlight. It was like I had just spread 200 lbs of dandelion seed, clover seed, poison ivy, woody weeds, crab grass, junk bushes, wild strawberry, thistle, tree seed, thorny vine weed, and one weed that's sprouted I HAVE to get identified. It was so much work trying to weed I just gave up and some the front of my property looked like a serious situtation gone bad. This year, before it all sprung back I carefully planned my attack to reclaim it. I tilled it to get rid of the perennial weeds, waited a couple weeks to let the billions and billions of weed seed I'd brought to the surface again sprout and I raked them with a scuffle action hoe which pulls all the baby weeds out and they suffocated on the surface on a hot day. I repeated this again a couple weeks later, and then layered 6 layers of paper and mulched it heavily. I hope that disaster is over. The one weed I have to identify, it looked like a large dandelion but would throw up a flower spike similar to a rhubarb and leaves weren't jagged. The tiller couldn't take it down, so I attacked it with a shovel and found out why. It was like, a weed with the top as big as a dandelion but it's tap root went down 3-4+ feet and thick as cucumber! I'd never seen a plant with a root system that huge, and the top be that small comparitively. I hope you the best, before spreading it around I'd try to sterilize it in the sun first, you do that by spreading it over the driveway on a hot summer day and completely cover it in black plastic. Your goal is to get it over 140F so the weed seeds die, along with any beneficial bacteria, etc in essence sterilizing it. The good bacteria & fungi will quickly re-establish themselves afterward and the dirt should be pretty much weed free.

This message was edited May 31, 2007 3:19 PM

Thanks to all of you. Momo125, If you've got the shipping I've got the mulch.!!

Yes , Tggfisk, I'm glad you mentioned the earthworms. I hadn't been paying attention, but now I'm making sure I move them. My son goes fishing a lot, so it's a boon to him. Rake a little and there's tons of earthworms.

Hi Marshmellow, I worried about the same thing, but some of it has been in my beds since March and the weeds haven't been a problem so far. Next week they'll probably show up. ha ha.

I want to tell you all something funny. I have one pile in the back that I've put into a "mulch pile" That's where I put veg. peelings, egg shells, etc. One day I saw these "weeds" growing . I didn't bother them for a while, then decided I should go pull them out. As I pulled, I pulled up the prettiest potatoes I've ever seen. I guress when I threw away some old potatoes or peels, they started to grow. If I had tried to grow them, I wouldn't have been able too.

Ha! Ain't that always the way???? Will they make a pretty vine for you?

We get pumpkins from our mulch...I leave them if there's room where they pop up. I have one enormous vine in the back right now that must be 10' right now. Gotta love those happy accidents:)