Advice on garden reorganisation

Hi all. I am planning a huge garden make over this autum. I'm very excited about it!

I've been watching 'open gardens' on bbc and have noticed that nearly everyone on it has bark chips on their beds as a mulch.

I have decided after trying to cope with weeds this year, that I would like to do this in my beds, especially where i have new planting that needs to mature to fit the space, leaving lots of open soil.

But I have a few questions about it..

1. How thick shoudl it be to suppress the weeds?

2. If there are things beneath the soil, which come up in the spring, like bulbs, perennials, dahlias etc, will they come up through the bark?

3. Is bark chip or the thicker nuggets of bark best?

I'd be really grateful for any help!

 

I mulched last winter,all down my front borders ,dahlias,fuchsia,daffs whatever was in there, I was away December-March but i understand the weather was bad :hehe:,
I used run of the mill not too large mulch and put it on quite thickly, as i was not going to be there to keep an eye on it,

When i got home mid March, my daffs ,i picked type to flower March/April, were just opening, and all my other plants survived the winter, the mulch had mostly disappeared, i assume the worms etc had broke it down and took it in to the soil,

 

Hi,

1. How thick shoudl it be to suppress the weeds?

2. If there are things beneath the soil, which come up in the spring, like bulbs, perennials, dahlias etc, will they come up through the bark?

Yes-this also answers your first question-the weeds will stick poke through, the best you can hope for is some help with keeping them down.

3. Is bark chip or the thicker nuggets of bark best? chips really as they take less time to decompose.


Good Luck, I look forward to seeing your project unfold.

 

Hello Jim and Vicki
I hope you enjoy reorganising your garden.
If you are going to put bark down you might want to think about puting some porous membrane under it - at least in places - like where you want to plant the shrubs and wait for them to grow. That will stop weeds from coming up.

If you decide you want to plant something else at a later date you can just cut a hole through it.

Your bulbs wouldn't come up through the membrane (they will come through the bark allright) but if you know where they are you can cut out sections for them.

The membrane will stop weeds and stop your bark disappearing into the soil.
I found it really worth doing.

Have fun.

 

Hmmmm... garden makeover programmes like using bark mulch cos it looks good on telly. Then the Blackbirds come along, and throw it all over the place making a mess.

A mulch is often a good idea, but bark doesn't do much to enrich the soil, think about the alternatives like spent mushroom compost, or even better, your own made garden compost.they will decompose and be taken down by the worms, but this is great for the soil... so just put more on... !

Bulbs and perenials which completely die back to below ground level can be covered by a couple of inches of a mulch, and will happily push though in the spring, with a perenial or shrub that doesn't die right back, try not to swamp the plant, but put the mulch between the plants.

Don't mulch if the grould is very dry undrerneath, it will stay dry.

If you have any of those long rooted perenial weeds such as bindweed or couch grass, they will still come through the mulch, so deal with them now (A glyphosphate weedkiller is the best way!). The mulch will stop, or impede new weeds seeds germinating, if any do appear they will be easier to pull out

Edit.. with respect to Alice... I don't go for the membrane option... it never looks right to me!

 

That's a good idea, and I think it eill be reaslly worth doing in the small beds I plan to make from scratch - I know there will be nothing under there I want except for what I plant.

 

Open Gardens is not a make over show - I love it because it is about people who have applied to get into the National Garden Scheme.. It inspires me because they are ordinary folk and their gardens. I am impressed by what can be achieved and how they manage to stay on top of it.

As regards the ground being dry underneath, if I water it well and then mulch will it help retain the moisture?

 

You should water before applying mulch as a general rule of thumb anyway Vicki, I don't like the mebrane stuff either-not because of looks but because in my own experience I don't find it is worth the expense and trouble of laying it out-the bruisers of the weedworld(dandelions etc) still poke through and seeds still find their way in-the mulch will compost and they will seed in it and you'll be back to square one in no time I reckon-and manking about with strips of membrane to boot. Each to their own I think. That programme-is it the one with Carol Klein? I like her.

 

I had a very weedy garden and tried a number of mulches with some success.
Grass cutting around the apple trees - worked a treat, killing 3ft nettles
Horse manure around the roses - This also worked a treat, kind of burnt the weeds as they came up
Bark chip for the borders - kind of slowed the weeds down a bit
Wood chip on the paths with barrier - worked great
I tried the black fleece and didn't like it, it worked OK but if you ever want to dig over the soil it's nearly impossible to get a spade through it so you have to start at one end and try and peel it up.

 

I stand corrected... I'm far to busy in my own garden to watch telly about other folks!:lollol:

 

Show off! :wink:

Three little boys tie me to my house for the majority of my time - the best I can hope for to get my fix is the odd half hour gardening program when the little one's in bed!!! :ywn:

 

I too like Open Gardens but my one criticism is, they always seem to make a point of saying how 'small' many of the featured gardens are (although to be fair many of them do make it into the Yellow Book), but the quick glimpse you're afforded of the County Organisers' own gardens does seem to bear this out. I suspect, even when it is finished (if that day ever dawns) that few 'average' sized gardens would have the requisite 45 minutes interest and, whilst I appreciate that's the whole point of the scheme, I'm sure we all know that, even if it doesn't look very big, every garden gets a damned sight bigger the minute you pick up a fork or spade!

As for membrane - I put a double layer under the 8" of gravel upon which I built my deck 3 years ago and it's certainly done the trick there; but I also put some under my gravel path, airborne seeds have happily rooted themselves in the gravel and 'burrowed' through the membrane and, as pauly said earlier, it's damned nigh impossible to get anything like a spade or trowel through it, thus, you end up cutting the membrane to remove the weed and defeat the whole object of putting it down in the first place.

I'm sure someone will put me right on this, but I seem to remember being told that you shouldn't use straw as a mulch because it ' .. draws the goodness out of the soil' Or have I got that completely wrong?

 

You haven't got it wrong Fidgetsmum-anything as it decomposes does that. And you're right on the other point aswell-it's that law that says work expands to fill the time allotted lol.