You may recall last year I began a very unscientific experiment to determine if no-dig would work, particularly in terms of suppressing couch grass and my ability to generate/find sufficient mulch material.

The three bay Compost bin arrangement has been excellent at producing compost albeit with copious amounts of viable grass seed.  There is still quarter of a builder’s bag of sieved compost plus another bin is ready for processing – so yes, I can produce sufficient material – but is that the right kind of mulch to suppress weeds?

Well, no I don’t think it is.  However, the Horse Bedding is excellent at weed suppression.  I covered a small area with this last year and planted the pumpkins and courgettes through it and they were very happy.  It suppressed weeds, although some did seed and grow on top but they were easy to spot and pull out.  It rotted down beautifully – before and after shots:

Last weekend we had another delivery of fresh horse bedding and several wheelbarrow trips later, I’ve covered the whole areas with straw.  I’m hoping it will give the kale and PSB a bit of a boost too.