I have the same problem you do, and my plants are doing fine as long as I keep them well watered and try to keep the weeds out, a couple aren't mulched at all because I want some seeds to self sow for next year. I finally got 8 or 10 bags of compost from the city, my kids put my last two bags from last year on one bed, but now I have a new supply, some will be applied in the fall. It's $1.50 for a 40# bag but sometimes they are out. Right now they're out of mulch.

I've used a lot of leaves for mulch, am out now, but they are almost as good as compost. There are lots of other things I'm doing, but my posts get too long. If you have earthworms, they are a sign your soil isn't too bad and will help break down clay but takes a long time.

I have 2 xtra large bags of peat and don't know if and when I should put it on the beds that never got amended. If anybody knows, I'd appreciate an answer. Sometimes I wonder if you can do too much rather than too little. Our ancestors didn't do any of those things I don't think except weed and pretty hard to water from a well, so I doubt they did much of that either.

There are many other things I'm doing, but my posts get too long.

One speck of advice- if you meant to say put the bags of peat ON the bed, don't. If it dries out the water can't permeate it and it becomes a problem, not a help.

Incoporating it inot soil that needs organic matter, yes. But studies have shown that peat breaks down very fast as a soil amendment, isn't very cost effective and that it is a resource that renews itself very very slowly. Essentially, in one's own lifetime, consider it a non-renewable resource.

Well, it's kind of the wrong time of year, unless you have a bit of woods on your property, but can you get some leaves to shred? As aliska said, leaves are good too. If you can get some and shred them, I would pull back the mulch and spread the shredded leaves, and then put the mulch back over top of them.

You could even just leave the leaves as mulch, if you didn't want to put whatever mulch you already have back.

If you can't get leaves, perhaps some composted manure? Make sure it's composted and not fresh if you are putting it into your beds now.

And you could also buy bagged compost, although I would buy it from a reputable nursery.

Are you having a problem(s) with your plants? I suppose if everything is okay you can wait till fall to amend the beds.

To throw in my two cents, I don't think peat moss and potting soil will help all that much. I would definitely go with manure and/or shredded leaves before the peat and potting soil.

:)
Dee
Who can never seem to make enough of her own compost....

Dee, I never have enough of my own either, and I buy it to supplement what I've made...

garden for life, Home Depot here has carried a steer manure/aged wood chip blend for the last several years for right around $1 per bag. Composted to the no odor stage so well aged, it's dry and easy to handle and without weed seeds. Occasionally I'll get an odd bag with a few small rocks but that's not true of every bag.

ideabean, thanks for the warning. You don't know how close I came to just spreading it around to make up for running out of mulch but I figured it would blow away.

To amend you have to till or it's too hard. Tilling brings weed seeds to the surface. I like other methods better now. And you really have to make several passes with the tiller to get it mixed in well. It did help in front though. But I got some horrid clover in one of my bags of stuff, not like any I'd seen before, big stuff, not the purple, puts out runners, lays down new roots w/top growth, impossible to pull, horrid. Will be a long time fighting that just when I finally made some headway on the Bermuda grass.

I don't know what I'll do with that peat then. I hate to just give it away. My neighbors have pin oak trees, some blew into my beds, meant to drag their bags home but missed when they put them out. Now I'm out of leaves. My son collected them in the lawn mower catcher in mulch mode, but they were still pretty big. Is it that bad to just throw them on whole?

Don't throw away the peat - you can still use it. All you have to do is wet it thoroughly and then dig it into the soil. I've used peat often in the past to help bust up clay, and I had an old bale of it I had to use up so I mixed it into the vegetable beds before planting just this past weekend.

I normally fill the wheelbarrow about 1/2 full with dry peat, then wet it with the hose and mix with a shovel, repeat until the peat is nice and moist. Then I wheel off to the bed and dig it in - not a big deal.

I don't amend holes when planting. I amend the whole bed when the bed is new (or empty - as in the case of the vegetable patch). I mulch very heavily with leaves in the fall, which then break down to add organic matter over time and also act as a layer of mulch. Works great and is F-R-E-E!!

IMO, you don't have to till to amend. I have never tilled my beds, ever. You just have to be a bit patient. Just layering the amendments on top of the bed every spring and fall will help. They will get incorporated into the soil. You can use a trowel to turn things over a bit, but I don't think tilling is necessary. Quite the opposite - I'm of the camp that believes tilling harms the soil structure and deteriorates the soil.

Peat can also be used to make mixes for container plantings. I've never made my own, due to time constraints and laziness, lol, but I've read lots of recipes using peat. Don't give it away!

:)
Dee

diggerdee, I do like the edger on my tiller, but it hardly justifies the cost. Lasagna gardening is what some people are doing, couldn't think of the word yesterday, and I'm starting that approach from now on. I won't give the peat away, will gradually try to use it up. Here's an example where I could have used mxk3's idea. Have a rose and sucker where bad weeds got out of control, never mulched that one, and we couldn't spray that close. So I took the fork, loosened the soil, pulled out most of the weeds w/roots & tidied it up a bit. That's where I could have mixed in some peat. Then I covered it all with the last half bag of cypress mulch I have, saving the cedar for winter protection of my roses.

There are other spots that could use that treatment, so gradually maybe I can use up that peat. I was using it by mixing w/perlite for rooting roses but found something better for that. This I bought 4 bags for tilling in breaking ground, but only used 2 whole bags. And I paid a guy with a tractor for that because the tiller makes me too tired to do that much, it takes strong arm muscles to control it. I can handle it but not for such big jobs.

mxk3, There are some places and other areas where I can start doing that. Thanks for telling me how. I don't dig much but can some, because it's too hard on me. That's what I got the tiller for. But like we were saying, maybe it's not so good for the soil after all. It's not so easy like they show on commercials, bounces, skips, have to pull it backwards for tilling making it easier to stumble blah blah. They say it will break sod. It will if you want to go over it multiple times, bounces, easier to just dig yourself and save the hassle of dragging it out. I hate breaking sod anyhow. After I dig, I take an old serrated knife and cut the top grass off and try to shake the soil off, don't put it back in where I've cleared.

What do you do with your grass clippings after you mow the yard? I use the push mower with the bag attached whenever I mow around the garden so the mower doesn't throw grass all over the beds and into the trenched edging. Then I empty the clippings in a pile down by the garden where I also haul dirt on occasion. The dirt and grass clippings eventually breakdown and make an excellent material to use in new flower beds or add to established ones as a dressing.

I'm going to start having the bagger attached to the mower (I don't do the mowing). I would have saved the clippings before, but the yard was a mess with weeds and some grass had gone to seed, didn't want it in my garden, especially dandelion seeds, but little grass is even worse. I dig weeds and dandelions until my back hurts too much, then mowing should take care of the blooms, right? Nooooo, the minute you mow, those suckers shoot up seed heads like overnight.

A couple weeks ago I read a tip. Pour boiling water on weeds. Aha! That dandelion in the crack that has gotten so huge but can't get it out by the roots, I've got you now. Poured a lot of boiling water down there, and it wilted flat as a pancake. But I figured that darn root could stand almost anything. Today it was baaaack. I yanked off the leaves hoping if I keep at it, it will give up.

At some point I'll have to make myself mix some roundup, but I need to get more used to my sprayer first.

We use a mulching mower and leave the clippings on the lawn. Piled up grass clippings reek to high heaven if they aren't totally dry when piled up and around here totally dry doesn't occur until August.

We buy compost by the truckload, very cheap from the same people who sell bark dust/mulch etc. Only about twenty bucks for a big scoop that fills the full sized pick up truck. I cannot make enough compost.

Peatmoss and/or potting soil is expensive and not that great of an amendment. If you are going to buy something, buy compost or composted manure.

I thought about it later, but you might ask for oak leaves or aged manure on Freecycle. Manure I haven't tried yet because I'm afraid if it's not right, it will burn my plants.

I've not seen compost requests asked, offered, or filled on Freecycle but think I have mulch. Problem is you need a pickup which I don't. Doesn't hurt to try though. Lots of fill dirt but I'm leery about that.

There was a truck parked I saw out my window. Bins full of what looked like shredded bark. So I went and asked what they do with it, said they dump it in their ravine. I asked if I could have some, and they put one container in my leaf bin, but they were in too much of a hurry to give me any more.

I noticed that it is finely shredded trees with some soil mixed in, I'm using it cautiously in case there are weed or grass seeds in it.

On that note, one time I was puttering around in the front shrub border, and a tree company guy walked up to me and said he had a dumptruck full of wood chips that I could have free. I must have given him an odd look, because he then explained that all he is going to do is take them somewhere to dump (I forget where he said) and he didn't feel like making the trip, so if I want them I could have them.

I took him up on it and had so much mulch I was begging if off on the neighbors and some of my family LOL! But, hey, it was F-R-E-E and it all got taken/used.

So sometimes you'll just stumble upon stuff like that, or freecycle, etc. :0)

(Every fall I take my handcart and collect bags of shredded leaves that the neighbors put out, the lawn services shred them. Free shredded leaves!?! I'm all over that, even if I do look rather foolish wheeling a handcart full of stuffed bags down the street LOL!!!)

Just be careful what you ask for, lol!

I once stopped a tree trimming crew down the street from my friend's house. We needed some wood chips for a big pathway we were putting in. The crew said they'd be happy to dump the chips in her driveway. I eyed the truck and asked approximately how much there was. They answered about 15 cubic yards. I had had a load of compost delivered that was 16 cubic yards so I had a good idea of how much that was. I wouldn't be able to stay for the dumping of the chips.

I come back later in the afternoon, and just stood in amazement in the middle of my friend's driveway, with my mouth hanging open, just muttering, "Oh my God" over and over.

There was a pile about 8 feet high, ten feet wide, and twelve feet long sitting in her driveway! They must have dumped TWO loads there! I could not believe how big this friggin pile was. Luckily my friend was very gracious, and we got to work making the pathway. Then we put a second layer of chips on the pathway. Then a third. Then we mulched some beds. Then we mulched some more beds.

Then I had three teenage boys help me load two pick-up trucks full of chips to bring to my house.

Then I gave away a pick-up truck full on freecycle.

Then I was left with this:
{{gwi:238251}}
about 4 feet high by 8 feet long by 6 feet wide

My God, I thought this pile would never disappear. I loaded about 100 rubbermaid buckets full of these darn chips, making trip after trip back to my house - luckily I live nearby. I still have a pile of chips in my yard, but it's down to about three feet high and six feet in diameter.

The funny thing?

I'm afraid I'm going to run out by fall, lol!

Just make sure you are around when you get anything delivered. You might get a bit more than you bargained for!

:)
Dee

mxk3, sometimes I do my scavenging in the dead of night. I might mention to those neighbors that I'd like some of their oak leaves, and I could rake some from across the alley. I just use them whole or let a pile break down in a chickenwire bin, two, one large, one small I cobbled together, over the winter. The bins were full, and by spring, they had broken down by at least 1/3, goppy mess but worked well actually, stayed neater than mulch. Used 6 layers of wet newspaper for the borders. Gotta do it again. Even a little thing like that gets hard on my back.

dee, what a story! I'd be half frantic. Good thing your neighbor was a good sport about it. I did invest in a wheelbarrow AFTER I had new steps and section of sidewalk poured, and the concrete guy left me with a pile of fill, old concrete chunks and rocks. What a job that was for me sorting it all out on the driveway and carrying it in buckets, had to buy more topsoil, too. So I can sure empathize with your having to carry that in buckets. Sometimes I just fill a bucket anyway because it's quicker for a small job but better to fill the wheelbarrow for bigger ones.

The wheelbarrow I bought on an impulse after I picked up 10 bags of compost from the city, can barely lift but not carry, have to bounce it and too hard on me now. So that's how I do it, set the wheelbarrow in the street and push one bag at a time. The guy at the hardware store rearranged my 10 bags of compost so we could fit the wheelbarrow in the trunk of my little car.

Now my son has found me a nice little lawn cart in some trash. The wheelbarrow is easier, but the cart would work better for some things, it's like a wagon w/bigger tires.

Aliska, fill dirt is, at least in my area, heavy clay material (I am reluctant to call it "soil"). I would not use fill dirt for a garden.

Btw, peat is also a good media for many carnivorous plants and other bog plants should you decided to grow any :)