How do you add compost/soil-improver to already planted beds?

Hi, hope everyone is good - I am new to gardening, it is fascinating & i've got the bug for sure!

We have created a courtyard garden for our small London estate using very large planters/raised beds in which we planted perennials at the end of may & also in june.

tbh we started with rather poor soil in many of the troughs. When we planted the beds we added compost into the soil first, digging it in well to a depth of 2ft or so before planting (we used B&Q VERVE multipurpose compost), but tbh the soil still isn't that rich, it doesn't smell 'earthy/soil-y' enough to my nose at least.

Now the plants are coming to the end of the season & starting to die back, I've read that we need to mulch around the plants after cutting them back.

But also it would be good to further improve the soil if possible first, but obviously without digging up all the plants.

Currently there is a reasonable gap between plants as we just added them and left some distance between them they could grow into over time.

We also plan to now add bulbs (muscari, bluebells, daffs, anemone blanda, snowdrops & the like) for early flowers in spring before the perennials kick in next year, & again it'd be good to try to get the soil much better before we add those bulbs.

So - questions:

Do you just dig in manure/improver between the plants with a hand trowel/fork after cutting them back? & will the plants draw on this extra nutrition around them ok?

What is good to add to the soil if we do this? manure?

Should we also use a liquid feed?

We also plan to add worms, as the soil we purchased for the large planters don't seem to have any.

we want to do whatever we can to improve the soil before planting bulbs and then adding mulch.

or do we just simply add mulch and this will be sufficient to feed the soil, gradually being absorbed into the soil?

any suggestions/tips please?

thanks guys.

 

I did this last year to improve the soil (London clay) in my borders and also raise their level a bit - I had had my some landscaping done (lawn removed and replaced with gravel and slabs) which had left them looking rather sunken.

Autumn is actually a very good time to choose, with the soil warm and moist. Really all you need to do is to take out any perennial weeds, cut back existing plants as desired, and apply the new material as a biodegradable mulch: Mulches and mulching / RHS Gardening

I used a jumbo bag of this: Soil Conditioner If you are in London I can recommend this supplier - they do various more expensive composts as well, but I thought the cheap one very good quality. Inside the M25 they deliver the bags by crane lorry so it was swung directly into my front garden. Then I carried it through to the back using a tub trug and applied it around the borders, placing it initially in piles and then moving it around with a hand cultivator between the plants. I didn't dig it in - letting the rain and the worms do the hard work for me over the winter instead! I did put some bulbs in, planting them with a trowel and rather more deeply than I would do normally, into the soil below.

There is no need to add any fertilisers or feeds before the spring, and probably not then - I only use them if I see a particular plant growing which I think in need of it. Worms - I don't think I've ever seen earth worms for sale, only the brandlings/ tiger worms which colonise compost bins but wouldn't like it in a bed or pot. But you could transfer across to the pots any you dig up in the borders, or go out with a torch on a wet evening and you will probably find some on the surface of the earth you can gather up.

If you have been making compost in your own bins that will also make a good mulch when it is ready - I normally apply mine to the (bareish) borders in the same way around November.

 

Hi Clare.
Thanks for the reply. Actually I discovered Compost Direct last night while searching the web & it looks ok & good prices! Yes we are smack bang in central London.

Before that i'd found the London Topsoil Company who also do a jumbo bag of compost for about the same price... not sure if either is better than the other.

You can buy garden worms from Wiggly Wigglers (lol, great name) which i found online

the thing is there really are no worms in the troughs. We had 'not great' soil delivered by contractors & we dug it in really well and at no time have I seen a single solitary worm... but we have one brick-built older flowerbed also and that does have worms in it. You cant dig anywhere without seeing several of them... so we're going to get worms to add to each of the planters which are worm-less.


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@ARMANDII - hi, oh yes I am not expecting an instant fix

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So guys... we just spread the compost around the plants we already have installed (might dig it in a little here and there)? - do we also need to then mulch afterwards on top?

and to clarify... we do NOT need to also add any liquid feed? (some of the troughs have really poor soil tbh, these are not real flowerbeds in the ground).

 

Hi ARMANDII

1. no roses - a variety of perennials is what we have.

2. The troughs are planted already. But (as the plants only went in in june) could we quickly dig them out after they die back, replenish/change soil & replant them?? yes? (before they really establish roots next year)?

btw, if the worms leave a planter they face a hazardous journey across a brick-cobbled yard, then a climb up a 2ft tall brick planter to reach the nearest other soil bed - bare in mind these planters are 750 litres & they hold about a ton of soil each or thereabouts. so worms would have as much space to roam as in a flower bed tbh (i'd have thought, not being an expert on worms)

yes - i'm learning about the concrete effect - we did dig in plenty of compost down to about 2ft deep, but still it get's quite a hard crust when it's dry. Would mulch/small bark chips help that?

 

Hi ARMANDII

we've planted lupins, rudbeckia, echinacea purpurea, helenium, Leucanthemum, salvia, verbena, geranium rozanne, ferns, hosta, foxgloves, walkers catmint, euphorbia, heuchera, astilbe,
Anemone Honorine Jobert, sedum & aster jenny, plus some odds & ends like lobelia. We went for largish/tall varieties & we also had to take into account the sun in the courtyard which means 1/2 the yard get's only 2-3 hours a day while one part gets almost full sun.

We now need to add shorter creeping/spreading front-of-trough stuff for next year (i was thinking sweet woodruff & anemone blanda?) & bulbs this autumn for early-to-late spring too (bluebells, snowdrops, daffs & muscari).

we've also got some other planters to be added which will have creeping jenny trailing down them & other lower maintenance/shade bits & bobs on top like more ferns

i also want to add some brunnera to spread & fill in gaps in the shade beds & maybe some foamflower & some cow parsley & more euphorbia, but this time wood spurge for the more shaded planters.

Also we're going to add lots of Alium bulbs for next year. It's also been suggested we make a herb bed.

This leads to the foxglove question... i understand they flower every other year, so the ones we put in which flowered this year therefore wont flower next year i'm assuming? or do the seeds they drop mature to flower in that next year & then does the dormant 'donor/parent' plant then come back for year 2, and then they alternate? (maybe we need to add more foxgloves in the same positions next spring & then we'll get them each year as they rotate? I really need those foxgloves as a feature in the shade.

 

Hi ARMANDII

"in the green"? (looks it up on google) ah, but we're just going to have to go with bulbs this time i think & suffer any duds as we need to plant several hundred across the many planters. Do you think i'll get better quality bulbs from Waitrose Garden (crocus) than say ASDA who are flogging them now?


Surprisingly we had very few failures, but then we bought all the plants already grown in pots and transferred them after which they flowered... the slugs (i assume) did decimate some of the hostas though, the little buggers munched some of the Hostas back to stalks almost! grrr!

I was rather disappointed with the Leucanthemums tbh. We got some Christina Hagemann & some superbum becky. The Hagemanns were quite ragged in appearance and flopped over more, a bit disappointing tbh, but while the Becky's were more vertical, neither lasted very long. I wanted that spray of white you get by the side of motorways but i guess they dont last long or i bought the wrong types?

As for the rudbeckia; some of the goldsturms are only just starting to flower, and didn't grow as tall as the various webpages said they grow (maybe they'll be bigger next year?), but the Herbstonnes are incredible, really tall with tons of yellow flowers, absolutely spectacular!

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so, to finish with the same question.. Does it matter where you get bulbs? As i said, ASDA are doing cheap bulbs now including anenome blanda (which we want), but maybe they've sat in the warehouse since last year? we need LOTS... we plan to plant hundreds.

question 2: foxgloves (to clarify). we bought them as plants in pots about a 1.0-1.5 feet tall, transferred them to the beds and they flowered a few weeks later & lasted for 2 months (some are still putting out flowers now even)... so those ones dying out now will NOT re-grow & flower next year correct? - but the seeds they drop (if they take) will also NOT flower next year?
So if we want foxgloves again next year, in the same locations, we must add new plants alongside the old dormant ones next spring & then those newly added ones will flower & the dormant ones will take over the following year & then we'll have foxgloves each year from then onwards?
have I got that right?

(btw, we planted several colours: Digitalis Peach, Digitalis Pink, Digitalis Purple & Digitalis White - the purple ones seem to have smaller flowers and wilt over much more than the others)

rsvp
cheers

 

oh btw... i want to add some bleeding hearts to the shadier beds for spring to add some spectacular feature.... does one buy & plant them now or wait & put them in early next year (February or whenever?)?

also can you suggest any plants? We want to go for stuff that is not too 'council flowerbed'... stuff that suggests semi-wild, woodland-ish.... stuff that'll flower for a long time, chucking up new flowers through summer (or later into the autumn) but will keep on flowering. Also anything of that nature that doesn't need full sun & can stand some shade (2-3 hours of direct sun in mornings only)

what are some of your favourites?
cheers
??