New Forest Floor

      We got the first large log for the forest today and decided to start a new section of the forest floor. You see, when you go into the woods, there's no grass. Obviously a number of reasons cause this, number one being that there's no sunlight because the trees block it. Our trees aren't big enough to cast shade yet, it'll be quite a while. The other main reason there's no grass is because the leaves and pine needles make a thick blanket that grass and many weeds can't grow through. Since the trees in our forest only have a handful of leaves to drop, they won't be creating a carpet any time soon. So again, we figured we'd help it along.

      Last summer marked the beginning of our faux forest floor. It consisted of orange pine needles with a few sticks and old pine cones to give it a realistic feel. Overall the look was spectacular and it gave the impression of being a real forest. The majority of our trees are pine so it seemed only natural to have fallen pine needles everywhere. But, we knew that weeds would burst through. We did not however realize how quickly they would rear their ugly little heads. And I mean ugly, one of these things looks like a cactus with prickers that poke right through heavy duty gloves.

      So we picked up the needles, put them aside and fought back. The first plan was to use landscaping fabric. Yeah, no, waste of money. You see, that's why I don't put any money into the forest, go natural, it's cheaper. Well, almost natural, we used cardboard and newspaper. It did the trick. A few layers of newspaper, a layer of corrugated cardboard on top of that, then the dead pine needles to give it some natural beauty. It stopped almost all of the weeds, for the Summer and Fall. Then Spring came around and the weeds popped right up through the softened cardboard like it wasn't even there. Albeit not as many, but a lot of them. The only downside was that it didn't feel natural walking on the cardboard covered ground. It looked like a real forest but it didn't feel like one. The needles were authentic, even the snapping of tiny twigs beneath my feet, but the cardboard never felt like real ground, no matter how much it rained.

      This year we're trying it without the cardboard. The plan is to simply make it a much thicker layer of ground cover. This year we're also adding a lot of leaves to the mix. With some of our most successful transplants being leafy trees, we decided to adapt our forest floor to its surroundings. So we loaded up a couple bucket loads of leaves, pine needles, sticks and pine cones from the woods out back and dumped them in the yard, mostly beneath the new log. It's amazing how little a couple five gallon buckets will get you. We knew this from last year but it's always a disappointment. The rain prevented us from going back for a second trip so right now the tiny area we covered is only about two inches thick, half of what we're going for this year. But we'll see how it fares without a lower layer to block the weeds.