Why I Oughta...

I've used biosolids (municipal biosolids from Downers Grove) in various ways over the years on our property - topdressing of my lawn in spots, as an amendment and accelerant in our compost bins , as a vertical mulch to try to improve the soil/clay conditions in my front porch bed (along with leaf litter) , as a soil/perennial bed amendment with stump grindings to attempt to balance the nitrogen loss , as a little boost when planting new shrubs like the SnowQueen Oakleaf Hydrangeas and most recently as both soil cover and hole-filler in the newly extended IB2DWS bed area with my new dwarf conifer garden and new (to me) flowers.   This year, I'm going to be using them in a few (new to me) additional ways:  first, as a dormant application on top of my beds.  This Fall, I blew most of the leaves out of my beds and chopped them up with the mower.   I then blew some of those chopped leaves back into the beds and left plenty of small pieces in the lawn.   T...

The planting bed that is out front of our porch has been something that has been on my mind for years.  Specifically...the growing conditions.  Between a few things going on out there, I think it might be time (this year) to take an even more aggressive stance at improving the soil across this foundation planting bed.  Last year (2022), one of the items on my annual to-do list was to think about how we improve the conditions up there and I suppose that I did that (a little) and gave myself a partial grade of complete.   The way I was thinking about this problem was across a couple of fronts:  hydrophobic mulch and the root mat from the Norway Maple .   Starting last Spring, I went about trying to fix the hydrophobic mulch issue - including the addition of some nitrogen in the form of alfalfa cubes and raked it in .  Then, in the Fall, I attempted to do even more.  First...with the removal and grinding of the Norway Maple tree, I'm hopin...