In with the new - mulch that is.

My friend Michael has mountains of wood chips/saw dust as a by-product of his wood biz. Each year I get as many bags of these wood chips as will fit in my car, to spread on the paths of my small enclosed vege garden.

The old chips that have been on the paths since the previous year have started to break down and, mixed with the weeds and soil dropped on the paths, have started to produce a sort of rough compost.

 

Scraping this mix, helps clean the pathway of fresh weeds, and I find I have a great mulch to spread on the garden beds around the existing plants.

For a few weeks, all looks weed free and well cared for. The "path compost" can continue to break down on the beds, adding a little bit more humus and some more nutrients to the soil.

At one end of the vege garden I have a couple of old crates that I use as compost makers. But not too much of this compost ends up on the garden beds.

 

The reason for this is that because the garden is quite small, and we've only been using it as our primary vege garden space for the last few years, I am still in the process of expanding it.

How I do this in a way that requires almost no work on my part, is to move the compost bins each spring and use the resulting compost pile from the previous year as part of the new garden space. This way I increase the vege garden beds by about 3 square metres each year, and the new bed is weed free and well composted for a new season.

I do dream about having more compost to spread around the rest of the garden. But I make do with planting green manures, using the "path compost" and buying worm poo each spring.