Hello all. So I have a comparable question though I believe I may be a bit more savvy in my method. I am raising my primary garden veggie bed and attempting to re-start a 12 x 13 ft vegetable garden and am considering dumping several --6 to 8 inches of wood mulch (or more!) on it in the next few weeks with the idea that a lot will break down over the winter and be ready for some top-dressed compost around new veggies in the spring. I have HEAVY clay soil here and have fought this yard for 4 summers with very little luck. My veggies are average at best over the last few years; I've brought in YARDS of sand; composted horse manure; real topsoil; mushroom compost and surround the veggies with my vermicast each spring. Today, I just finished putting a limestone rock border around the area and it could likely handle approximately 14-18 inches of mulch. My clay soil (soil is probably a misnomer and I hate to even call it that) EATS all amendments I add and I am at my wits end. With 6 or 7 months of time for an obviously heavy amount of free mulch from the city, I can likely get at least a foot on there. How much do you think it will break down in 6 months? Hopefully I won't get walnut mulch again which happened at a different house. At this point in the year I'll get some greens left which will get a bit of thermophilic composting going on so I'm expecting a bit of heat, but I think I'm ok with a foot of wood mulch. I'm going to remove the asparagus I have planted there prior and I'll be able to start 'fresh' with a new spot in the spring. I can (and may have to) remove a few inches in the spring if need be which I'm willing to do. I SO want to drop two feet on there and then 'skim' it in the spring. This clay is a beast and I'm trying to prepare for next year. I am a seasoned gardener and I'm getting schooled by this awful soil and I can't afford thousands of dollars in compost over the next several years. I dump hundreds of dollars each year into this spot and am underwhelming my wife's expectations. The raised piece is my last hope. Thoughts?

Please excuse if you have already checked the fruit tree forum, but that might also be a place to find out about the DG for root growth. Is your native soil very dense [clay]? I'm thinking that the advantage for a professional tree grower of using the DG as a growing medium -- encouraging dense mat of roots,is that it prevents the tree from becoming root bound and transplants easily. Makes me think of what I've read about 'air-pruned' root containers. Which doesn't seem to apply to home gardener who is growing plants in the ground. /// http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/prof/msg0400023025604.html /// http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/fig/msg061658052348.html?18 /// Here is a link that might be useful: Fruit and orchard forum

rhizo and softmentor, thank you both for your input about the mulching. I've just finished mulching my little citrus area with pine bark mulch, so it would be too late to remove all the mulch now. What I did was I left 1-2 ft around the trunk area bare and hope that will help to prevent root rot. Before the whole area was filled with weeds. There's a golden rain tree in the neighbor's yard that overhangs. It keeps sending seeds that sprout like crazy. I was too tired to fight with them and of course other assortment of agressive weeds which was the reason for my idea of mulching. Yes, rhizo, I'm weary of the fungus infection. I'll certainly take note to avoid overwatering from now on. The only problem here in Fl is sometimes we do get very wet rainy season that rains for days on end like at the present time. Softmentor, you must have an incredible variety of citrus trees. 100 trees is a lot of trees. Are you growing all of them for a hobby? I wish I have that much land to grow that many. At the moment, I have 14 different kinds of citrus (5 of them are lemon/lime) and I have 3-4 spots left to plant orange trees. What would you recommend for my planting zone? I prefer those I can make juice out of and of course are disease resistant. Thanks again for any help you can offer.

The reason i mulch is that grass steals water and nutrients from the tree. Keeping the drip area or farther open helps the tree. Yes 4 feet beats three and is worth it IMHO. I mulch to slow down the grass and weeds. Everything else is gravy. As far as Redwoods and 13-13-13 is people forget we are not talking about forest trees here. A peach tree left on it's own will bear so much fruit it's branches will break and invite disease in. Needless to say it will die. We are talking about feeding domesticated trees, not wild ones. The fruit trees will not survive without our care. Well many of them. Also don't let dwarf fool you, not many trees are genetic dwarfs, so they are reduced by rootstock selection. This method doesn't work that well. 15 feet tall is very possible. Unless you have genetic dwarfs the best way to control size is by pruning to the height you desire and forget about rootstock, use dwarf, semi-dwarf or regular. I find the non-dwarfing rootstocks are darn good, and I prefer to use them. Like Lovell for peaches. I do like using dwarf rootstock for cherries though. They bear faster and produce well.