woe...my raised bed soil is always dry, powdery, and a maze of fine, running, reddish roots. it's about 30% hairy rootmatter, in fact, and doesn't hold water at all.
oh, i 've imported sackfulls of horse poo and armfuls of seaweed, and compost and peastraw and all (but perhaps not enough).
perhaps the cause is that i originally half-filled these raised beds with sifted mulch, not just soil. That was 14 months ago. Not a good idea, i now know.
how might i get a stickier, darker, more water-retaining soil going?
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One way of restricting tree roots from invading your plot is to bury old corrugated iron sheets vertically between the offending tree and the bed. Among others; pohutukawa, karo, taupata and many hedge plants are notorious for taking over.
Clay will hold much more water than pure humus, so why not employ common sense and use both? In my garden I have quite simply mixed the clay soil (and a lot of it was yellow subsoil with no humus at all in it) with compost.
The maze of fine, running, reddish roots is some shrub or tree that is mining your bed. Check whats nearby!
So I would suggest you incorporate some clay into your compost then you would be all set for dry summers and also for wet winters and the compost would actually be much more stable. Most organic gardners would be horrified if they checked how much carbon they release with their composting :)
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The maze of fine, running, reddish roots is some shrub or tree that is mining your bed. Check whats nearby!
So I would suggest you incorporate some clay into your compost then you would be all set for dry summers and also for wet winters and the compost would actually be much more stable. Most organic gardners would be horrified if they checked how much carbon they release with their composting :)