Why I Oughta...

The small raised vegetable bed on our patio is home to a couple of tomato plants and some herbs every growing season.  Those plants pull the nutrients out of the soil pretty rapidly, so each Spring I need to top-off this bed with some new organic material.  Below, is a photo showing the pre-topping-off state of the raised bed showing some left-over stems and other leaf litter.   This being a vegetable bed, I'm careful with what I put in here - so this year (like last year), I opted to use a bag and a half of composted manure - brand name Moo-Nure.  I've used this in various beds in the garden to improve the soil conditions and to provide a nutrient-rich plantingbed.  See below for the Moo-Nure bag: This stuff is R I C H, so I opted to spread out the bag and just leave the bed to sort-of "mellow out".  I'll plant this up in the coming week-or-so, but will allow the composted manure to aerate-and-chill for a couple of cycles before adding the plants....

This is the third in a series of posts related to the removal of our large, 70-year-old (but in decline) Norway Maple tree in our front yard.  First, I shared photos of the tree being removed .  Then yesterday, I showed photos and a video of the stump being ground out .  Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about what comes next.  After doing a little bit of digging on the Web about what to do after you grind a stump, I've come to the conclusion that I needed to think about both amending the soil with organic material AND....being deliberate about adding nitrogen.   The stump grinding left behind A LOT of small pieces of wood.  A mulch of sorts.  But, about two-feet-deep. I knew that we're going to plant a new three here, so I wanted to be proactive with the soil.  I also knew that I'm dealing with a LOT of hydrophobic mulch in this area, so anything I do here will likely help.  In fact...I'm pretty sure the act of grinding the stump -...