Newbie absolute beginner requires advice and help

Hi all,

As the title suggests, me and the missus are not exactly green fingered, but we want to make a change.

To give you a bit of history on our garden, we moved in approx 10 years ago, and one flower bed totaly overgrown, and the second one wasnt a flowerbed, it was a part of the garden with 20ft tall conifers.

Anyway, we decided to make two flower beds, firstly we cut all the conifers down, and cleared out the overgrown flowerbed. Both beds have a brick border and were clay soils, so about 7 years ago, I dug both to a depth of 18" added sharpe sand, peat, compost and topsoil etc and mixed, then planted. Everything looked fantastic.

For the next 3 years after, we added compost to the top and mixed in and again, had some really good flowering years.

However, we've kinda let things go for the past 3-4 years, and the area that used to be under the conifer trees is always very dry and soft and dusty.

The other area is always dry and hard, and when dug up, comes up in big clay type lumps.

Additionally, we've had about 7 conifer type plants die on us going brown before dying.

So, can anyone recommend what to do with the flowerbeds in terms of improving the soils, and could anyone hazard a guess as to why the conifers died?

We live in Essex if thats any help.

Thanks in advance.

 

Welcome to GC.

I don't know why your conifers died, but dry, dusty soil sounds like it needs a generous dose of farmyard manure to improve the structure of the soil. Same with the clay area, and maybe some sand/grit in there too.

 

Thanks Clueless.

I have given the areas affected some farmyard manure and was advised at the garden centre to keep turning it over for a couple of weeks before planting. Sound about right to you?

Thanks

 

I'm not the guru on here by any means (hence the username ), but I'd dig it in very thoroughly, like the garden centre people said, digging several times, just to make sure it is nicely mixed in. Otherwise you'll end up with pockets of poor soil along with pockets of good soil. Then I'd spread a bit more manure over the surface, and let the rain and earthworms sort that layer out. You can do that final layer whenever, as you can plant straight through it as long as it is well rotted.

 

Thanks again, I have kept a couple of bags back, and was gonna apply it again in a few weeks.

 

Hi amsie. Welcome.

I'm no guru either (especially when it comes to your conifers) - but what I would say is don't give up. For 40 years my Father gardened on clay so heavy a friend of ours would actually take lumps of it away to make household pottery, (I still have the coffee set and some rather chunky 'glasses'!) and there were times when the only way to break up the ground was with a pickaxe.

On the up-side, you're lucky in that clay soil is highly fertile, it's just that it's a bit more difficult to get at those nutrients. Apart from manure and as much organic matter as you can lay your hands on, I'd suggest you also dig in bark and grit - the RHS suggests 7.5cm (3in) layer of grit into the top 15cm (6in) of soil. I'd suggest you 'start small' - to cut down the cost as much as the damage to your back! - and work on making just one bed for now, get that going and you can move on to the next.

As a BTW - although Dad's garden was as I've described, and he dug manure into it every one of those 40 years, there wasn't anything that didn't grow. When we first moved in and the ground was rock solid, he just dug it in the autumn and let the frost break up some of the lumps then, the following year he grew potatoes (yes - in what was to become the flower beds) all of which helped to break up the soil ... not your first thought when it comes to border plants I grant you - but edible!

Dig the manure in well - 'hot pockets' of manure can scorch roots