A Garden Experiment

Our property has seventeen long needle pine trees (maybe they are loblolly pines).  We have lived here for fifteen years and disposing of the pine straw has always been a challenge. The city used to have a recomposting dump.  Then I would haul as many as 200 large leaf and lawn clippings bags to the dump.  Now the city picks up the bags of pine straw and leaves. For two years a man in town traded me bags of leaves for bags of pine straw and I put the leaves on our gardens. He soon had more pine straw than he could use for several years.

This year my wife decided that we were going to use those mounds of pine straw. We lined the garden fences with a two foot mound of pine straw to keep heavy rains from washing away parts of the garden.  She used pine straw between the rows to keep weeds from growing and to retain moisture.  Everyone said that the pine straw was too acidic and would kill the garden. My wife used more lime than usual.  As for the gardens, they are very happy. The plants are all lush and green.  Some of them have blooms. We are looking forward to the best gardens in years thanks to the pine straw that we have been throwing away for over a decade.