Here’s an email exchange with a customer of mine that addresses some common questions. I hope it is helpful or at least reassuring to you, dear reader.
Hello Colleen,I figure you are pretty busy right now with spring here. No hurry on these questions. I've had them for a while and am just getting around to asking you. We are enjoying some mild weather and love seeing what comes out day to day around here.
I listened to the Planting In a Post-Wild World podcast and purchased the book and read it cover to cover. (What a beautiful book!). The two things I took away from it were:planting more plants instead of mulching (I have heard you say much the same before.)designing with "drifts" vs creating areas of one type of plant. With regard to "drifts," I like the idea of it and the results, but you really have to be confident about your plant community harmony - and I'm just not there yet. It would be like me picking up a paint brush and trying to paint something on a canvas. I would almost have to copy a specific garden done like this to feel like I was doing it right. That being said, I have LOTS of bed area to populate here, so I could experiment in a small section. I could sow a prairie seed mix. I've put out a lot of seed, and haven't seen much for it, so I am still skeptical that seeds are really things that produce actual plants. Still quite mysterious to me.
With regard to mulch - here is my question. I would like to have less mulch and more plants. But I have a lot of bed area and I plant and plant and plant, and there's still a lot of space between plants. Things are still small. I'm introducing some "groundcover" like horseherb, frogfruit and lyreleaf sage. If I mulch right up to those, I worry that they will be discouraged from expanding (although my observation is that this does not seem to be the case with frogfruit - that stuff is strong). So I've been pushing back the mulch as the ground cover expands. That leaves soil exposed for a while, anyway. Do you think this is a good approach?
How do you manage the need for plants vs mulch?Hope all is well with you. Thank you!
Hi Connie- good to hear from you!
Re: plants v mulch. If you plant more plants closer together at the beginning it will look fuller and there will be fewer weeds, especially if you are able to plant larger size plants from the nursery. But as time goes by, usually about 3-5 years, and plants get larger and also spread via roots or seeds then you have to remove plants because it will look overgrown. So you can decide how much money you can spend on plants, how much weeding you want to do and how much editing/transplanting and removal you want to do later. It’s all maintenance just different types of tasks.
Wood mulch does inhibit the spread of plants as you suspect. But it also helps prevent weeds. Using leaves, especially chopped up leaves, is a better choice for encouraging the spread of good plants but sometimes can cause baby trees to volunteer. Pine straw and pecan shell mulch are also better for not inhibiting growth.
The sheer square footage of your place requires a huge number of plants.
Planting from seeds is always tricky as it is heavily weather dependent and they can’t sprout on top of mulch. They absolutely have to have direct contact with soil. Different seeds sprout at different times of year and often we plant seeds and they will sit for months or years until the conditions are right.
Ok I’d love to come out and do another consultation for you sometime!