Our garden in short has horrible soil, very heavy and claggy. For the last two years since starting the garden I have been focusing on the planting hole adding heaps of compost and animal manure to nourish the new plant directly.
What I was also doing during this time was adding copious amounts of mulch on top the soil in between those plants. This photo is of a cut of soil that has had that mulch on top of the soil treatment, at the top of the spade cut you will see the soil is nice and crumbly then changing to the more typical hard shiney clay from below the worm.
This shows the effect of good quality mulch moving through the soil profile over time. The extra worm activity is helping as well, they are processing the soil and adding organic matter 24/7.
For my money there is still another two or three years before I will be confident to just plant veges straight into the soil but I look forward to that day.
I will never stop using mulch because the soil just gets better and better every year of its use.
Be Happy,
Barry.
www.organic-vegetable-garden.net
