Mulch

[dxmachina]

Nice day, but I didn't ride. I did ride last night, and my legs are a little sore. Instead I decided to finally do something about mulching the forsythia and small-leafed rhododendrons I planted some years back. Of course, it would've been way easier to do it then, when there was a freshly dug circle around each new planting, but I didn't.

I got a couple of bags of bark mulch last fall, some of which got spread over the new tulip bed, but there was still a bag and a half left. Since I didn't have a nice neat hole to fill, I was worried that the bark would look really sloppy if I just heaped it around the plants. The solution was to buy some of that plastic lawn edging stuff, out of which I made a ring about 2½' in diameter and 4" high. Open the ring, wrap it around a shrub, close the circle, and stuff it with mulch the way you'd spoon batter into a cake pan. The shrubs are still small enough that once the mulch was in I could just lift the ring up leaving a perfect circular pile of mulch behind. Genius!

Only problem is I ran out of mulch. Another bag should do it. I just have no idea when I'm going to do it, given that I'm heading for Jersey Friday night.

Comments

[rainoftoads.livejournal.com]

Ugh, mulching. I need to get on that before the perennials get any bigger. I hates it I does.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

See, I spread the mulch over the tulips and daffodils while they were still bulbs last fall, which seems a great time saver. Then when it was time to put some pansies in the bed, I just scraped it away and planted the flowers. Come fall I will be applying the same philosophy to my other daffodil bed.

And even though mulching is a pain, it certainly beats weeding.