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[Rob <becida AT comcast.net>]

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Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 11:45:17 -0400
From: tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT roanoke.infi.net>
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To: "Homestead mailing list" <homestead AT listserv.unc.edu>
Subject: Mulch
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Pat Meadows wrote:

> >
>     When/if my husband and I are able to buy a house (rather
> than renting an apartment as we now are), I will face this
> problem.
>
>   I'm 56 now, I'll want a productive garden RIGHT AWAY!  I
> say this because of the oft-seen advice to gradually improve
> your soil with organic matter, year by year.  Yes.  Fine.
> I've done that in the past and I'll do it again, but I'll
> also want a productive garden from the first year.
>
>   I'm planning to put in raised beds, and fill them with
> (purchased) topsoil (unless topsoil is an awful lot more
> expensive than I realize).  I'll happily spend a couple of
> hundred dollars, if need be.  Does this sound as if it would
> work?  Other suggestions?
>
>   Both my husband and I have back problems, I'll be very
> short on available physical labor.  That's one reason I
> think the raised beds are the way to go.  Advice on this?
>
> Pat
>
> Tvoivozhd---On the matter of free mulch.  Almost every community I
know of
> gathers up Christmas trees, lawn clippings, brushpiles at curbside,
runs them
> through a chipper at a central location and gives the chips to anyone
who will
> haul them away.  Not everything is taken, and that is hauled by the
ciity off
> to a landfill---a terrible waste.

You will want to avoid the lawn clippings unless you have a taste for 
malathion and diazinon, but the leaves and Christmas tree chips poison 
content will be immensely less---probably none from Christmas trees..

Also find out from the County road crews where and when they clean out the 
drainage ditches each side of rural roads (not lead-laden main highways) 
and when they (or the tree-contractors they hire) schedule cutting and 
chipping roadside brush.  They, or the tree-contractors are delighted to be 
able to dump their loads in your front yard if it saves them a forty mile 
haul to a disposal site.  A major ice storm or hurricane is generally a 
bonanza---electric company and telephone company repair crews working 
around the clock to clear up storm debris and restore service.  Just be 
sure you get chips from roadsides that are not treated with brushkiller.

On more thing---if you live in a hilly area, from late fall through April, 
anywhere along rural roads, you will see hundreds of tons of leaves in the 
drainage ditches each side of the road.  Every time it rains, they wash 
down out of the woods, off hillsides into those same drainage ditches, 
concentrated by water currents for your convenience. It helps to have a 
pickup truck or small two-wheel trailer, and a small leaf shredder with a 
vacuum hose attachment to suck up the leaves.  Look for one to which you 
can tie a big plastic 40 gallon or so leaf bag.  Punch some holes in it to 
let out the blast of air from the shredder-impeller.

You can simply rake up the leaves and hand-stuff them in the leaf bags, but 
the leaf shredders are a lot faster and reduce the volume by two thirds or 
more.  My preference would be these rural leaves.  Except where they use 
herbicides on roadside brush, they, like rural-raised Christmas tree chips, 
will be poison-free.

Also, at the cost of a chipper-shredder (more than a leaf-shredder, but not 
necessarily new), there are tons of  cardboard boxes in apartment, office 
building dumpsters, behind small stores and shopping malls just waiting to 
become worm-food in your garden.  If your soil is impenetrable clay, visit 
some construction sites and add their discarded gypsum-and-paper-and-glue 
sheetrock scraps to your compost heap or garden-mulch.

On the matter of raised-beds.  This is usually interpreted as beds raised 
one level by rocks, old railroad ties etc. I don't really want to work at 
ankle-height anymore, and eight inches higher is an improvement, but not 
enough for me.  So this year I put in some new strawberry pyramids (round, 
though).  CT Farm and Country have been selling the heavy-duty Professional 
plastic lawn edging (six inches by twenty feet). for $2.99 (twice that at 
Home Depot  and Lowes).  Three rolls will make a four-ring pyramid.  Cut 
the edging with a pruner to make the appropriate diameter ring when the 
ends are lapped a foot.  Drill through the lapped ends and thread something 
like electric fence wire back and forth through the holes. One-inch by 1/4 
bolts with washers would do as well and, unless the wire is aluminum, will 
last longer.  I made the first ring about six feet diameter, and stepped 
each succeeding ring back eight or ten inches---it's not critical.  If it 
had not been threatening rain and I was in a hurry, I would have shrunk the 
spacing between rings and gone higher.  Three-inch spacing is plenty.

If you are not in such a hurry, it would be a good idea (extend the season) 
by cutting a one and one-half or two inch plastic pipe to the height of 
your intended pyramide, plus four feet (cut off any excess later)  Put a 
threaded cap on top and bottom, the bottom one containing a half inch elbow 
threaded one end and hose-barb at the other---this is your irrigation 
supply (a clamped-on half-inch polyethylene flexible tubing).

At each level of your mound, drill and imbed a hose-barb to receive 
irrigation laterals.  My preference is "Irrigro" because it is so resistant 
to clogging (do put a filter in your water supply line, though) 
http://www.irrigro.com/

Irrigro is a "leaky" tubing made from Tyvek; and will probably last longer 
than you will.  You attach one end of each lateral to its hose barb on the 
vertical central pipe, and lead the other end through a drilled hole in 
your plastic edging.  There it has a plug, removable if it is ever 
necessary to flush out the laterals.

Irrigro will withstand high pressures, but operates at about five 
pounds.  High pressure clogs drippers and porous hose alike, imbeds debris 
in the pores.  Low pressure lets water seep through---the reason I prefer 
porous hose to dripper hose.  It also makes it easy to fertilze through the 
water supply.  Put a fifty-five gallon barrel about 11.5 feet above the 
garden to be irrigated (gravity pressure equals .433 per foot of 
water-column height).  Install a water filter in the outlet line, and a 
control valve inside the barrel---toilet-type float valve or a Hudson 
pressure valve from an agricultural supply house (used for stock 
water-tanks).  Drop a gunnysack full of cow manure in the tank---presto, 
manure tea!

Back to the one and one-half or two inch plastic pipe.  This is going to 
stand vertically in the center of the mound.  In addition to easy 
irrigation and fertilization, you can imbed metal or plastic vertical 
pipe-sections vertically arount the outside perimeter of the first level, 
into which half-inch PVC pipes are inserted, the upper ends of which are 
bent to form an umbrella structure imbedded and glued into a short piece of 
PVC pipe.

Cover the umbrella with translucent plastic sheet for a miniature 
greenhouse and bird-repellant---replace annuallly for cheap sheet, every 
five years for

expensive greenhouse fabric. One layer will extend your strawberry season a 
month or more (with day-neutral Tribute), two layers (a flexible-strip 
between fastened to the umbrella ribs) will have you picking strawberries 
well into December or January.  You will have to make access doors for 
picking, and vent doors to vent excess heat, or combinations thereof, with 
tightly sealing gaskets at the edges.

An afterthought---"good" topsoil is hard to come by at any price.  I'd want 
to see where it came from. What is generally sold for good topsoil 
isn't.  Most general contractors save their topsoil for landscaping after 
construction is complete.