Okay, friends, I’m a little stumped. I’m in NYC with big planter boxes on a deck. Each one is roughly 60” long x 18” deep by 20” tall. After going down the rabbit hole, I insulated them with foam board (visible here as aqua) to protect against wild temperatur swings. I planted all this a year ago with native perennials, and I must say, big success.
BUT: now between runoff, soil compaction, and possibly wizardry, the soil level is down a couple inches, exposing the foam board. I want to top them off with compost both for aesthetics and because they’re containers and could use the nutrients.
BUT BUT: what do I do about my plants? Do I try to dig up root balls and shove compost underneath? Do I top them off and make wells for each plant, risking some serious plant unhappiness?
What would you do??
by F13nd1sh
2 Comments
Top dress w/ compost
It’s just one of the maintenance requirements of growing in containers: the material in containers breaks down over time and you will eventually need to add more to the containers.
I agree that you should be able to top dress this for this year. But going forward, plan to add more to the growing medium, maybe annually. Depending on what you use, you could go 2-3 years in between. When the time comes, yes, you would remove the plant to adjust its height in the container and fill in around the plant. It’s like potting up, you just reuse the same container as long as the plant still fits.