I’d grown tired of my trees looking unkempt in the field, with grass growing right up to their trunks. Not to mention it made mowing very difficult! Pretty ugly, huh?
So I ordered a load of mulch and a load of compost and got to work yesterday sprucing up the trees.
First I used a rope and a can of marking paint to draw circles around the trees. Then I got out the weed wacker and took down all the grass within the circles as short as I could get it. I trimmed around the trunks with hand shears.
Then I put down a layer of newspapers to help kill the grass around the trees, and covered that up with a thin layer of compost. The compost will provide a great nutrient boost to the trees. The hardest part of this project was working alone it was hard to get the newspaper to stay down long enough to get compost on it—the paper kept blowing away in the slightest breeze.
And then I spread a couple of inches of nice mulch on top of the paper and compost. It was slow work and I am quite sore today from all the pitchforking and shoveling but the trees that I finished look great and seem happy. Stay tuned for a final reveal! Meanwhile, I am taking the day to recuperate and enjoy some good times down in Nelson County at the Festy!
If you ever have to do this again, and I expect you will, just wet the newspaper down as you layer it 5-6 pages deep (or more). It’ll stay in place til it dries out, giving you plenty of time to put mulch down.
I generally don’t open the newspaper all the way, and lay down a thick half fold. It won’t prohibit watering the tree, and will take much linger to disintegrate, killing most if not all the grass in the process.