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I've got that sinking feeling, in my planter.....
DaveKearley
Posts: 130
Some may have seen it before but i have a very large planter I built just over a year ago, 1st garden project. Its 2.4m x 2.4m x 600mm. It took over 2300kg of soil to fill plus 500kg of large gravel at the base.
The soil compost has really settled badly despite watering etc, it's now about 6" lower than where it should be. I can easily add compost to raise it but that won't raise the plants - is there anything i can do here?
My only thought is to wait until later in the year, raise each plant, add soil and re-plant the plants, working my way round. ?
It's holding Dianthus x3, Delphiniums x2, Heuchera x2, Cortaderia x1, and a couple of other small ones I can't remember.
The soil compost has really settled badly despite watering etc, it's now about 6" lower than where it should be. I can easily add compost to raise it but that won't raise the plants - is there anything i can do here?
My only thought is to wait until later in the year, raise each plant, add soil and re-plant the plants, working my way round. ?
It's holding Dianthus x3, Delphiniums x2, Heuchera x2, Cortaderia x1, and a couple of other small ones I can't remember.
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Posts
It will probably be cheaper for me to get another 'dumpy' bag delivered than using the smaller garden centre ones.
I guess it is good/acceptable to mix the topsoil in with the peat-free and fill the planter with the mix, should I mix in some type of fertiliser too?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
It does seem to mulch down a lot, its dropped about 10" in a year and was topped up a bit during early summer. I'm new to this so just bought what seemed correct, a few plants disagreed with it and died but mostly they seem happy now.
The Delphiniums have put on a third show which is nice and the other plants are calming down now its cooling off.
Is it possible to just lift the lot, line them up on the patio and then rework the soil in the planter? I was thinking of doing it bit by bit but a single-hit would make combining the soil/compost easier.
I find that the level in most planters do tend to drop and we add more to ours, usually in the spring.
It took 700ltrs of compost plus a large pile of topsoil from the pond project to raise it to where I wanted the levels!
Looks a lot better now, hopefully I didn't upset the plants too much. There are a couple of spaces now, going to stick some Begonias in there - we have two growing in pots at present (red one is just on the left of the picture) and they have really bloomed well, we like them.