DRIPPING SPRINGS BABBLE: DRIPPING GARDENS WITH BLOOM: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! (OF "MR. MOM" MOMENTS AND THE COMMANDMENTS OF COMPOST AND MULCH)

DRIPPING GARDENS WITH BLOOM: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! (OF "MR. MOM" MOMENTS AND THE COMMANDMENTS OF COMPOST AND MULCH)

Bloom is the colorful and charming nursery, owned by Elizabeth McIntosh and her landscaper husband John, located on the grounds of Rolling in Thyme & Dough. Thanks to Bloom, our own gardens did indeed do so, and now Elizabeth has graciously agreed to share her gardening thoughts with us. This Thursday continues what we hope will be an ongoing series of gardening tips relevant to Dripping Springs gardens (but no pressure, Elizabeth!).

By Elizabeth McIntosh
Every time I drive my boys to school I recall a scene from the 1983 movie Mr. Mom where Michael Keaton was going the wrong direction in the pick-up/drop-off line and the teacher on duty, along with a chorus of mothers, was reprimanding him, “You’re doing it wrong!” Surely most of us have had similar clueless moments. Be it in our day to day life, or out in the garden, our insecurities flare up and we yearn for someone to pat us on the back and say, instead, “You’re doing it right.” I see this in the nursery all the time, customers just needing a little reassurance that they are on the right track. While I can’t offer a magic formula for gardening, here are a couple basic commandments to heed, as well as a handful of mistakes to avoid.

Commandment Number One: Add compost. Always start with the soil, the foundation of the garden. Out here you’re lucky if you have any, and even luckier if it is healthy and fertile. Assuming you are in the unlucky majority, you would do well to start improving what little you have. Don’t think this only applies to vegetable gardens; look around —the landscapes you lust after all have ample, healthy, live soil. Compost is the single most important thing you can add to your soil, for a number of reasons. To quote John Jeavons, author of How to Grow More Vegetables, “Good compost is the most important part of the garden. It aerates soil, breaks up clay, binds together sand, improves drainage, prevents erosion, neutralizes toxins, holds precious moisture, releases essential nutrients and feeds the micro-biotic life of the soil, creating healthy conditions for natural antibiotics, worms, and beneficial fungi.” Notice, however, he said good compost. The best, assuming it is done right, is the compost you make yourself. This tid-bit, mind you, is coming from someone who has never successfully made her own. We attempted an open-bin and too many varmints had me pegged for the midnight salad bar. A closed system in a barrel, or something with a lid, is definitely the way to go when you live as close to nature as we do. There is a library worth of information at your fingertips if you should choose this highly respectable option.

The next best thing to making your own is buying a high-quality compost from a local nursery. Problem is, commercially available compost is not always properly decomposed, resulting in either glorified mulch or anaerobic bags of, well, poo. Ask to see it first. And then feel it, and then smell it. It should smell earthy, not sour. It should feel moist and spongy — that’s the humus, the most important part of the compost (not to be confused with hummus, a popular chick-pea based pot-luck dish). More often than not, however, even the better products tend to be lacking in humus. Given that humus holds the equivalent of 80-90 percent of its weight in water, it’s not something to be taken lightly. But don’t give up, microbes to the rescue. Once compost is added to the soil, with adequate microbial activity, the process will continue, resulting in the all important organic matter.

On the subject of microbes, Grace Gershuny, author of Start With the Soil, states, “The fertility of your soil — it’s capacity to nurture healthy plants — depends on the health, vitality, and diversity of the organisms that live, grow, reproduce, and die in the soil…To improve the fertility of your soil, you must provide hospitable conditions for soil organisms.” In short, there’s not much point in amending your soil if it’s devoid of life. And since our extreme summers are less than hospitable for precious soil flora, it is all the more imperative to protect and nurture those tiny ultra-valuable microbes. Which leads us to the next commandment.

Commandment Number Two: Mulch your beds. Mulch not only suppresses weeds, it keeps the soil temperatures cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, making a far more desirable environment for earthworms and microbes — the invaluable humus making machines. Mulch makes happy microbes; happy microbes make humus. In dry climates (such as our own) mulching is critical for maintaining soil moisture. Between mulch and humus your plants stand a much better chance against this relentless drought. And if rain ever becomes a regular part of our lives again, mulch not only protects against erosion, it also keeps soil from splattering onto the leaves of plants which can spread soilborne diseases — especially important in the vegetable garden.

When choosing a type of mulch you want to look for shredded, local, aged mulch. Shredded because the fibers mesh together preventing the mulch from floating away when it rains. Local because, well local is just plain better. And aged because eventually you want the mulch to decompose in to the soil (adding more vital organic matter), and if it’s fresh, the decomposition will not only take much longer, but will tie up valuable nutrients in the process. Even better is a mulch with added nutrients and compost. Avoid pine bark nuggets; they are a waste of your hard earned money and will float away in the next gulley washer. Pine straw, on the other hand, is a great mulch, albeit expensive and most definitely not local. Once you have selected a mulch, please don’t make little volcanoes around your plants. Not only does this look ridiculous (in my outspoken opinion), but it actually does harm. Plants need a gap of a few inches or more around the base for air circulation — think doughnuts, not volcanoes.

Finally, for those of you who need numbers, the following are as close as you can get to hard and fast gardening rules:

How much compost? New gardens get up to three inches of compost. Established gardens need one inch a year. (Highly productive vegetable gardens may need an inch twice a year.) To figure out how much you need to get an inch, here’s the almighty magic formula: Length of Bed (ft) multiplied by Width of Bed (ft) then divided by 324, equals the number of cubic yards you need. Multiply that by the number of inches desired and, voila!

Best time to compost? Now, late winter to early spring.

How much mulch? At least one inch, no more than 2 inches. Too much can prevent what little rain we get from making it down in to the soil.

Best time to mulch? Anytime. The main exception to this rule is in vegetable gardens. The soil needs to warm up for tomatoes, peppers, melons, and other such crops to thrive.

And last but not least, just get out there and enjoy it! There’s very little you can do that’s so wrong it can’t be undone or dug up. And if it dies, throw it in the compost pile. You can’t go wrong with that!

PAST DRIPPING GARDENS WTH BLOOM:
February 26, 2009: OF ONE HIT WONDERS AND THE SINGING GARDEN
February 18, 2009: OF SLOWING DOWN AND THE CALL OF THE TOMATO
February 11, 2009: OF VEGETABLES AND OPTIMISM
February 4, 2009: OF WEEDS, WATER, AND WARM WINTER DAYS
January 29, 2009: OF CUTTING BACK PERENNIALS AND CRAPE MURDER