Over the weekend we finished spreading our first truckload of shredded hardwood mulch from Country Farm & Home. We’ve joined the ranks of so many gardeners I interviewed this summer who were fans. My husband is a fan of their beekeeping and chicken sections, and we bought some really healthy fruit trees a couple weeks ago. This mulch validates our decision to shift gears to a local garden shop. But back to the spreading … I think we’ll need at least two more loads to cover all of our garden beds. Cross your fingers that we won’t need four (my back will thank you)!
Dolly Sickles is an experienced gardener who’s been cultivating her green thumb for the last twenty-five years. She’s an avid practitioner of practical gardening learned through trial and error, and best practices gleaned from folks she meets in the community. She started writing about gardening in 2003 with a weekly column in The Apex Herald called The Optimistic Gardener, which ran until 2007. Her blog, Gardening Gloves, ran on WRAL.com from 2007 - 2009. Now that she's got time to focus on gardening again, she's restarting The Optimistic Gardener with The Chatham News & Record. She lives in Chatham County with her family, where she's also a novelist and an adjunct instructor in CCCC’s Creative Writing Program.
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