Much mulching

28-30 December 2016

Having tidied up the house for Christmas, we thought we'd spend the time before going to the UK in the garden, as the next internal job will be lathing and plastering again, and we know how much mess that makes!

So, out came the chomper, and I cut back some overgrown areas and dragged the cuttings to Dave, who fed them into the mulcher and then distributed the chompings onto the Moringa beds.

 Our little lemon tree, that gets swamped by the thicket behind it every couple of years.  I battled with brambles to cut back the turpentine tree immediately behind it

 Dave working the chomper on the decking outside the shed

Two days hard work and the Moringa and strawberry bed is fully, deeply mulched.  The Moringas may die if we have a hard frost, but hopefully the mulch will keep their roots warm.  We can only hope ...

 Several years ago, when we were living in the camper van and the cypresses kept growing too tall and overwhelming the decking, I used to cut them back and, for want of anything else to do with them, stacked all the offcut branches at the edge of our land.  Now we're mulching, I went to recover those branches as they are excellent for the mulch mix.  As I cleared them away, I found a wonderful, rich, almost-soil, not-quite-leafmould underneath ...

... and used it around the trees I thought needed it most.

I also trimmed some of the tall grasses that have grown up around the berry bushes, finding and clearing their watering circles, and adding munched up tree bark to keep the weeds down.

Nice to be spending time in the garden during these sunny days.