First photo is my inspiration.
Second photo is yesterday before I removed (transplanted elsewhere) the hydrangeas, grass and hibiscus.
Third photo is today after I’ve put down cardboard, soil, mulch and leaf litter. Doing my first No Dig attempt.
Do I really need to wait 3 months before planting? Yes, im impatient.
by Legitimate_Stock_776
8 Comments
Nah mate you can plant, just have holes in the cardboard where you want to plant and make sure water is able to access that plant that’s all.
Cardboard?
I tend to plant my trees when I mass mulch and weed mat a garden area. I’m also pro cardboard as it still allows your soil to breath while simultaneously smothering grass and weeds.
I’d suggest looking at your local council’s garden program to see if they provide free plants to rate payers at all and pick up a few established plants and plant directly into the earth, or tube stock and repot to then plant in 3-6 months once they’ve developed more prominent roots. This is particularly helpful if you’ve got clay soil.
You can plant, but the mulch is going to heat up (and kill weeds) and your new plants might not like the heat and you may get some plant death
No need to wait. We didn’t.
Cardboard+mulch doesn’t prevent all weeds (looking at you Oxalis and carpet weed) so the sooner you can get groundcovers in establishing the better. Just leave gaps around whatever you plant so they don’t overheat by the degrading mulch (or so I’ve read).
If you don’t wait 3 months, you just have to have weeded well and keep weeding.
One thing about cardboard is it stops water penetrating to the soil. So I would look to put holes in it in 3-6 months after it has done its shade properties.
About 3months will guarantee the grass and weeds are completely composted. If you plant immediately you’ll hit grass and risk that coming up through the mulch around your plants and feeding the grass runners under the cardboard to invade the patch again.
IMHO wait a few weeks do a test hole, if there’s green or yellow shoots under the cardboard, wait a few weeks do a different hole test again. Ideally it should be bare soil and only dead grass on the surface under the cardboard. If so plant into that.
Don’t wait. Just plant. We put veggies straight into the compost with the grass still dying under the cardboard. Best veggies ever