Still time to dress…

Top dress that is. Your garden.

If you are anxious to do something in your garden before your perennials begin sprouting or before they grow too much, or if you want to enrich a bed you have planned for a vegetable garden or annual flower garden, you can begin now by top dressing your gardens.

The farmer who planted feed corn for his chickens across the narrow lane road where I grew up used top dressing for his corn field, wisely spreading well cured chicken manure over the fields so the fields didn’t reek of fresh chicken manure – a not to be forgotten stink.

His corn grew high and healthy and while I am sure his fields produced enough corn to see his chickens well through the year, the corn fields were also a forest for us kids to explore, become lost in for a few minutes, and to create adventures.

While you may not grow fields of corn for your chickens, you may want to begin preparing your gardens for the growing season ahead.

We use our compost from our bin, shoveling the ‘brown gold’ out through the small bottom door, placing the compost on tarps or in plastic bins and dragging or carrying them to our gardens, then spreading the compost over the garden beds.

We never seem to have enough compost to completely cover our small gardens, though. In the past we have used an organic Maine product, a compost of lobster shells, peat and compost that seems to have been ideal for our gardens.

We spread a layer of what we have and/or that Maine organic product over our gardens before we think about doing anything else.

If you are feeling antsy about wanting to do some gardening and haven’t top dressed your gardens yet, you still have time. Why not think about doing it now? Your garden plants will love you for this!

 

Bill Baker

About Bill Baker

Bill's interest in a clean place to live is rooted in growing up in the country – a cornfield across the road and fields, sandstone cliffs and hundreds of acres of woods where he spent many hours.