Hi all,
I'm establishing a new garden on loamy / sandy, low organic content soil in a northern climate where the growing season is short (
tomatoes ripen 80% of the time, peppers generally do not)
I decided to make a double keyhole shaped garden but instead of a flat bed, I piled the dug soil from the pathways into as steep of a mound as the soil would naturally hold.
I did this in an attempt to increase the amount of
solar energy hitting the growing beds.
We planted
seed directly into the mound and then we got a serious amount of rain. The type of rain that caused flooding in the
city.
The rain caused some surface erosion but I don't think it was serious as the mounds seemed to have just sucked it up.
What I did notice after the storm had past was how quickly the beds dried out. A few days of sun and the beds were bone dry, so I quickly covered the soil with dried grass clipping
mulch. This seems to have helped with retaining moisture but the wind is now blowing the mulch away.
It's now 10 days since we planted, and there is no sign of anything popping up, and I'm getting nervous.
Did the dry spell after all that rain kill my germinating seeds? (note to self - we had frosts last week so maybe the soil temp is still too low)
Any ideas for keeping that mulch in place? I didn't want to mulch too heavily as the seedlings need to grow through it.
I'm busy making
compost as fast as possible, but this is not our property and we got access to it only a month ago. Time is of the essence...
What does everyone think? Sit tight? Flatten the beds and re-seed? Just re-seed? Add
compost from the
local landfill and re-seed?? FWIW, we put about $150 in seed into this garden already.