This episode is for those of you out there who may not have a vegetable garden yet, or who are planning to expand an existing growing space. Or maybe you're thinking about adding some new beds for the next growing season. We're talking about how sheet mulching might be a good technique for you. Mulching your future garden space over the winter can give you a jumpstart on the garden building process for next season.

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SHOW NOTES:

In this episode, we discuss:

• Applications for sheet mulching

• Materials that can be used for sheet mulching

• Basic steps for sheet mulching

Important Take-aways:

• Sheet mulching is a term that simply means covering the ground with a thick layer of material in order to smother existing plant matter often times, but now always, with the intention of creating a space for new plantings.

• Mulching your future garden space over the winter can give you a jumpstart on the garden building process for next season.

• While wood-framed raised beds are by far the most popular garden type we build, they are certainly more costly than simple in-ground raised beds and may not be the best choice for every garden space.

• If you are planning to build wood framed beds on the site, you may consider sheet mulching with a woody material like bark mulch or wood chips and then building the beds on top of this mulch.

• If you are sheet mulching an area for a planting of large perennial shrubs or trees, you'll want to dig the holes and plant before sheet mulching.

Heard on the Episode:

“There's plenty of physical work when it comes to gardening, so sheet mulching is an opportunity to work smarter and not harder! ” - Hilary Dahl

“If the cardboard boxes you're using for sheet mulching have plastic tape on that, you'll want to remove that. Otherwise, you'll be pulling strips of plastic tape out of your new garden beds in the spring!” - Kellie Phelan

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