Planting
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You plant a raised-bed mulch garden just as you would
any raised-bed garden: Place the seeds close
enough so that, when the plants are mature, their leaves
will overlap to form a continuous canopy. If it's a new,
unmulched bed, sow the seeds as you normally would. Make a
furrow (or hole, or whatever is appropriate) in the ground,
plant the seeds and cover them with soil. Then sprinkle a
little well-rotted mulch or compost on top of the earth to
prevent soil crusting, and place mulch on either side of
the planted area to limit weed growth and compaction from
rain. As the plants grow, tuck mulch around them.
"This is as close to planting the way Nature
does as any method."
If the garden is already mulched, it's an easy task to move
the thin (one- to two-inch) layer remaining in spring and
plant. For example, to plant peas I rake the mulch back to
form a one-foot-wide strip of bare earth. Then I plant just
as I do in unmulched beds. With finer seeds such as lettuce
or carrots, I'll rake of an area about four feet square,
sprinkle the seeds directly on the ground and cover them
with a bit of compost or rotted mulch. This is as close to
planting the way Mother Nature does as any method I know.
What Mulch?
You can use newspapers or plastic sheeting as mulch, but
they add little (in the case of newspaper, which decomposes
slowly) or nothing (in the case of plastic) to the soil . .
. and they leave a lot to be desired aesthetically.
Newspapers do work well for mulching aisles, though. I take
care not to use colored newspapers, however (harmful
chemicals can leach into the soil), and I cover the papers
with hay to hide them and to keep them from blowing away.
I prefer organic mulches, which not only fertilize the soil
but feed my plow jockeys (worms). Hay and straw are
excellent and long-lasting Grass clippings are good but
decay more quickly. Be careful not to use clippings from
lawns that have been treated with weed killers; traces of
herbicides can be deadly to tomatoes (although, in my
experience, they don't seem to harm fruit trees and some
other garden plants). Bark chips make an attractive mulch.
Leaves are fine, too, but only if they've been shredded or
composted for a year. Freshly raked tree leaves cake
together and smother the soil, retarding plant growth
(raspberries, however, thrive in such material). Finely
chipped tree limbs make a good, enduring mulch (but let the
chips age and soften a year before you try to walk in your
garden barefoot).
I've heard people say that sawdust and some other organic
mulches pull the nitrogen out of the soil; as far as I can
tell, this is true only at the surface and doesn't extend
into the earth. I've never noticed such a problem in all my
years of mulching.
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