Planting Under Trees - Part 2

In their natural forest setting, trees are used to fairly large quantities of organic material covering the soil over their roots - fallen leaves; rotting logs and branches and decaying plant remains can accrue to quite a depth in undisturbed forest. Thus, adding six inches (15.24 cm) or so of organic planting mix is not going to hurt them. In fact, they will think they are in heaven and send feeder roots up into this mix as soon as they can. Your plants will, however, have time to get established before the tree roots start to compete for water and nutrients.

The mix I use depends on what I want to plant and what I have on hand. For perennials and non-ericaceous shrubs, I generally use a combination of sifted finished compost, bagged cow manure and rotted woodchips with a small amount of my native clay. I make the mix by eye, so the actual mix will vary. I'd say probably a good shovel full of soil to a wheelbarrow of other ingredients. If you keep a lot of plants in pots, spent potting soil is an excellent ingredient. I stockpile mine to use in making new beds.

For acid-lovers like Azaleas and Rhododendrons, the mix changes. Instead of mostly compost, I use mostly rotted woodchips with moistened peatmoss and rotted leaf mold (if I've got any). If you don't have access to rotted woodchips, you can used bagged fine chip mulch or, preferably super fines - a really fine pine bark product sold for conditioning soil. Sometimes I'll add that shovel full of native clay and sometimes I don't - no real reason; more the mood I'm in on that day. Of course, your soil may not be clay based at all, in which case, you need to make up your own mind whether to add any or not. The object is to keep this mix light and porous. Peatmoss is essential in this mix because of its acidity. I've found that other thoroughly decomposed organic materials are fairly neutral in pH and acid lovers want acid conditions to thrive. I'm otherwise not a fan of using peat products because they are not a renewable resource.

If you're opting for a mixed planting, mark out the area you want for a planting bed, wet the ground thoroughly and

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