You may remember when this happened:

 

 

 

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A storm brought this tree down and it had to be removed.  The tree removal company shredded the tree (most of it) into chips and we asked them to dump them on site.  Mulch Mountain was born.

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The stump was ground up, too, leaving this on the former tree spot:

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Mulch Hill.

Wanting to turn this area into a garden now that the sun can reach it, I began bringing in rotted logs:

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And piling on bags of grass clippings and leaves:

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Please ignore the randomly placed 2×4.  I have no idea what it’s doing there.

We planted a pumpkin vine in a bit of compost for kicks and giggles, as they say, knowing full well the squash vine borers would find it sooner or later.  They did.

I’ve been trying to decide what I will do with this new, plant-able area.  Opportunities like this don’t come up very often in my yard and I want to make the most of it.  The plan at the moment is to remove the shrubs and small trees that are left in this spot, keep building it up with leaf litter, and plant new blueberry bushes, a pair of muscadines (one purple, one golden) on a simple t-bar trellis, plus a strawberry bed in the center.  2014 will be the new plants’ “sleep” year, advance of their “creep” and “leap” years.  By the time the plants are ready to creep, the composting of the leaves, clippings, shreds, and logs should be pretty advanced and the resulting soil pretty awesome.

I want to include some permaculture elements, like planting comfrey and daylilies, both of which have multiple functions, around the edges.

The strawberries will get here in October, so I have to prepare the center bed with soil by then.  The shredded bark/leaves/grass clippings won’t be composted enough at that time, so I may have to ‘make a well in the center’ so to speak, and make the strawberry bed with compost imported from the compost heap, and let the areas around it compost over time.

I’ll keep you posted with pics of the progress.

And if you can tell me what that 2×4 is doing there I would appreciate it.