New bare dirt of good quality - what to do now?

I am nearly finished clearing English ivy and Vinca major and minor from half of my backyard. The dirt underneth is beautiful. Fall leaves had been dumped there since 1965. Vinca was alread there and growing unmolested. Ivy came of in 1991 and convered the ground completely, meeting up with the vinca. Large quantities of uncut leaves were dumped on top of the ivy and vinca in the Fall, and by Spring they would disappear underneath, like having fallen into quicksand.

Beautiful dirt, like the best topsoil. I have nothing to plant yet. Wild onions are starting to appear.

I will have avaiable newpapers and cardboard, grass clippings and some coffee grounds and not a whole lot of vegetable scraps since I live alone. Should I layer this stuff over the bare earth? In what order? Should I do a top covering of pine nuggets or hardword mulch? This 50 year covering of decomposed leaves probably had no green in it other than what got raked up with the leaves that were dumped there, and whatever weeds had grown that year on top of the pile would have ended upder the new leaves.

I also have a large stack of oak firewood that had been overgrown by the vinca and ivy. The indivdual pieces are pretty weel rotted and crunbly. Could they be clubbed around a bit and broken up ti serve as the mulch layer? Do I need green stuff hevily mixed with the rotting oak firewood?

Will it all have decomposed enough to plant something in the Spring? And I'm still not clear on the newspapers - the black and white pages only, ot are the colored sections OK?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Hi notgrnjean! What do you want to grow there? A lot of things can/should be planted now. Maybe a cover crop of winter rye to keep out weeds until spring ? You might consider getting a soil test. Just some things to think about

Hi, claypa.
Some of what I want to plant:

Mitchella repens (Partridgeberry)
Asarum canadense (wild ginger)
Lindera benzoin
Hamamelis virginiana
Euonymus americanus (American strawberry, Hearts A Burstin’)
Cornus alternifolia
Polystichum acrostichoides

Unfortunately I still haven’t been able to find much locally (non-mail order). Each tiny ground cover plant is going to cost $8-9 from any internet source. (I’ve read lots of sites now.) I hadn’t thought of how expensive it would be to plant. Getting just 10 tiney plants of each of the ground covers will cost $200 ! And they aren't going to cover ground quickly. I hadn’t thought of the cost of replacement when I started removing the ivy and vinca. I have approximately 5000 sq ft to cover. (About 400 sq ft is still covered in the Vinca that I am removing.)

Almost all of this area is in light to deep shade.

I am going to have a lot of bare earth for a long time, it seems. I was thinking rather than growing difficult weed like wild onion that I would just make more good earth. I hadn’t even thought of an annual grass. Do you think that would be better? I’m afraid I’d still get a lot of bad weeds...

I am going to transplant some wild violets and mulch around them. I know some people don’t like them but I think they’re fine. They also are easy to remove if I want to.

I was thinking that if I just kept growing "good dirt" that I could plant individuals along the way.

Would the rotten oak firewood be OK to break up and use as mulch?


Edited to add the zeroes to the sq ft figures.

This message was edited Sep 27, 2006 9:34 AM

My suggestion would be to make sure that the ivy and vinca is under control before you start planting. It is much easier to remove weeds when you don't have to worry about harming your new plants and you don't want to be battling with these plants for the next few years. I will add that I removed English ivy from an area in my backyard and I had very little problems with it resprouting, but I have heard of others having such problems. Like you, this was also very good soil from the constant recycling of leaves and weeds.

A layer of newspaper or cardboard topped with mulch would be a big help in keeping down weeds. How big of an area are you talking about? I am lucky in that I can get shredded wood mulch free from Fairfax County, but having 4 yards of mulch delivered might cost more than you want to spend.

- Brent

Thanks Brent. The mulch will cost about $135. I don't think that's too bad if it helps reduce future workload (removing weeds). I had competely forgotten about the regrowth problem. It was one thought (mental excuse) for not trying to "cover" the area at one time with those tiny expensive plants. Some small areas (total area about 5000 sq ft) I have cleared on hands and knees with my glasses on looking for tiny roots. Those areas are probably OK, but I am expecting some regrowth in hand-cleared but not crawling on my knees areas.


Edited to add the zeroes to the sq ft figure.

This message was edited Sep 27, 2006 9:35 AM