The gardens have settled into their summertime style

I’m doing massive amounts of clean up - weeding out all the garden beds & sheet mulching (where things aren’t growing) to suppress weeds & make fresh soil for future plantings. The city came out & cleared a bunch of trees near electric wires & now i have lots of fresh tree mulch to top the beds with. Just moving resources around! That’s a lot of what regenerative gardening is all about - recognizing the potential of available resources and moving them around.

Sheet mulching isn’t just suppressing weeds - it’s creating rich soil to plant into. All of the weeds & grass under the cardboard are packed with nitrogen & as they decay they nourish the earth & attract all the wriggling & crawling creatures that feed off of the decaying vegetation. The bugs & fungal activity do the work of turning it into fertile soil.

While all that activity is going on below the cardboard- over time the cardboard itself will break down & you will be left with rich soil for future planting.

As you can see this is not a precious or precise process - just make sure you have complete coverage to suppress the weed growth you don’t want & then top it. I’m simply using mulch to top these sections as I have no plans to plant anything new into these beds this year. I’m using every scrap of cardboard i have around regardless of the size.

As I get into the detailed weeding of the rock garden beds I’m finding lots of rock roses growing in the crevices which of course I want to continue to flourish! So here is where I’m getting more detailed with some lighter weight brown paper to mulch around them a bit.

I’ve also been pruning back some of the trees. It’s not technically the right season - but the temps are low enough & they really (really!!) need it.

When you work with nature enough you start to be able to read it. It will tell you what it needs. Observation is the most powerful tool you have in your gardening kit. 🌱