Dear Charles and community, this is my first post in the new website!
I work in a community garden in Sweden. We have our beautiful hot compost system using straw and the waste of the community kitchen (100 meals a day twice a day in summer!). In the spring of the new season we spread this compost on top of the no dig beds,
However we have an extensive area of raised beds only dedicated to pumpkins (they keep for a long time in winter) and we do not have enough compost to cover the whole area with a thick layer of this precious material.
I was wondering if would be possible to use less nutritional mulch on the whole surface (like cardboard and straw) and concentrate the use of the garden compost only thickly mulching it around the pumpkin plants. Since the plants are so widely spaced I was thinking this could be a smart solution but I am concerned to miss the point of a holistic approach to the soil.
In general the whole topic of using the best nutritional material where the plants are transplanted rather than evenly spread on the ground came to me as an interesting question.
Thank you to anyone who would like to help me in clarify this topics.
Much Love
Massimo
