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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] raised beds

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Harvey Ussery <huboxwood@earthlink.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] raised beds
  • Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 13:10:26 -0400

BTW, where we planted our blueberry bushes, the bulldozed had missed. All I had to do in those places was lay out small branches stripped off baby pine trees that had been trying to encroach on our apple trees. Once the needles fell off the branches, I used the branches as stakes elsewhere if they were big enough. Otherwise I let them stay. ~Laura

Laura, thanks so much for sharing this--what a great idea! We just cut down a *big* arbor vitae that had been a major element in the inner landscape at our place since we moved here 22 years ago. (It had developed core rot and its multiple trunks were sagging more and more earthward.) I wanted very much to use the needles/leaves to mulch both our blueberry bed and the space where the arbor vitae had grown, which I will plant to Swiss stone pine, cranberries, and other acid-loving plants--but it seemed like a prodigious amount of work, snipping off all those twig tips. Now my approach will be to simply shear off all the branches, lay them on the areas I want to mulch, then next spring pull away the larger branches, which by then will have dropped all their leaves/needles for a nice mulch.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Virginia
www.themodernhomestead.us




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