mulch and Strulch

I have moved most of the bags of Strulch out of the way through to the back garden, so that there is now space to get a wheelbarrow past.  The trailer wouldn't squeeze through, but that's fine, because the tractor would never get back up the slope even without a load on it, let alone pulling a trailer, what with the grass being so wet and the tractor having so little oomph nowadays.   Some of the bags of Strulch are stacked outside the garage, waiting to go on the rose beds.  Others are piled alongside the long bed, and there are a couple by the hellebore bed in front of the oil tank.  I saw to my displeasure that weed seedlings are already coming up on the mushroom compost mulch in that one, so Strulch cannot come soon enough.

Now it is a race to apply it.  Day by day weed seedlings are germinating, and I want them smothered beneath a thick layer of mineralised straw before they can.  The foliage of the rightful inhabitants of the borders is likewise expanding daily, making it harder to apply the Strulch.  And the garden is now dotted with piles of brilliant white plastic bags, and will be until I use their contents.  I'd like that to be within the next few days and not have the bags there all summer, like the two dump bags of sand I ordered in around 2005, just before my back really began to play up, which ended up sitting by the herb bed for several years.

The Strulch bags are not completely weather proof, and in an ideal world would be stored under cover.  As it is, they're not, which means that each time it rains, the Strulch becomes a little more sticky, holding together in clumps and clods instead of sprinkling evenly over the ground.  In theory you are supposed to water it after applying it, unless rain is imminent, and it then holds together in a dense layer that doesn't blow away.  Until you are ready to use it you really want to keep it dry, but I don't have a convenient shed or barn.  I could have made it into a great heap on the concrete and covered it with a tarpaulin, but couldn't be bothered to barrow it all the way from the entrance to the concrete, when I was going to have to bring most of it back again.

Applying the Strulch is quite satisfying, and I have made a start in three different beds.  It would have been more logical to do one at a time, but I couldn't decide which was the most urgent.  They have already been weeded, and dosed with mushroom compost, where I'm planning to use it this year, so before putting the Strulch on I pull out any off weeds I've missed, or seedlings which have sprung up since I did the weeding, then sprinkle with organic fertiliser.  Everything is getting fish, blood and bone, since the everlasting rain must have washed an awful lot of nutrients out of the soil, and the sandy parts of the garden never hold on to them anyway.  Beds on the lightest and poorest soil are getting a sprinkling of 6X composted chicken manure as well, to give them a quick nitrogen boost.

It would probably be more realistic to count on it taking two or three weeks rather than a few days to apply all the Strulch.  I'm sure there isn't going to be enough to do all the beds, but fifty bags was all I could afford in one go.  Besides, I can't simultaneously worry I don't have enough while worrying that I don't have time to use what I have got.