Raised garden

Robert, I noticed on many of your photos, that there is special colour of the soil where you are. It almost looks like ash to me. Does this territorry have hills of vulcanic origin? Or what makes it so dark?

This raised area here is a mixture of screened topsoil, peat moss and horse manure. The horse manure has been piled up for over a year so it's broken down enough where I can use it for topsoil. The soil where I am now is very sandy but there's good topsoil on top. I use a mulch that breaks down very quickly and that makes a lot of my garden areas look dark.

Tell, me what mulch does break rapidly? I use usually pine bark, but it seems as if it takes fertility from the land, so I use more and more often oak leaves.

Some of the best mulch I've ever had came from a tree service company. They were doing some work in my hedgerows and I let them dump their truck in my yard after they were done chipping the brush. The best stuff to buy (at least here) is a natural mulch, usually it is ground finer than other mulch. Since it breaks down so quickly, it is also cheaper. It may be different there, ask at a local nursery or landscape supply place that sells mulch for something that will break down fast.

Oh, taht´s good that you live so close to woods. I sometime go to pick oak leaves to forests which are around 40 kilometres from here. People whom I meet usually watch with surprise, when they see a woman picking leaves into large bag, lol.