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Hi, I’ve done beds with municipal compost, I wouldn’t think bacteria is an issue as they make sure it gets really hot, so if anything it is slightly less full of microbial life than is ideal. The worst thing with it was the small bits of plastic or glass but it was easy and cheap to get large quantities of and had no viable weed seeds because of the high temperatures during composting.
+1 for Joan J, very healthy canes where all our others have died off.
I would go with more compost, it’s usually pretty clean to walk on and leaves no harbourage for slugs, whereas all the nooks and crannies in slate would probably be a haven for them in our damp part of the world. Wood chips would probably be fine too, but it seems like you’ve no problem getting hold of compost if you’ve just spread 67t of it! It also means you don’t need to add any sides to your beds, which keeps cost down and the plants roots will draw goodness from the paths as well as the beds.
I have inherited a large patch of lemon balm which the bees love in later summer, but it can spread quickly so keep it under control. The foliage has a nice scent too.
I planted a new pear tree four years ago, and we haven’t had a pear off it despite a good showing of blossom each spring. Sometimes two or three fruitlets are visible around May but they don’t seem to swell and come mid summer there’s nothing there. Could that be the pear midge? We don’t have any other pear trees within 1 km but we do have about forty beehives on the farm that should help with pollination. I’ve heard biodynamics mentioned before. What does it involve?
Also wondered if anyone has had climbing beans developing a slimy pale grey main shoot about four inches from the compost surface causing them to wither all the way up. About four of my six bean plants have done this. I’m putting it down to an excessively wet July.
Re parsnips, they were the first thing I sowed into my new no-dig bed at the end of March, but while everything else thrived nothing happened with the parsnips. Only eight weeks later did they eventually emerge and now look like giving some reasonable roots. Not sure what caused the delay in germination but that’s the longest I’ve ever had to wait for them to show up. Good job I was too lazy to put something else in! My first sowing of lettuce was also slow to emerge and was caught up by my second sowing a couple of weeks later. Maybe my compost was cold from sitting on a shady north facing concrete pad and took a while to warm up.
As an afterthought, one way of protecting against slugs would be to spread your best quality most friable compost on the surface as this leaves less convenient clods and crannies for the slugs to shelter in, as well as the additional benefit of being easiest to sow seeds into. We’ve lots of broken eggshells in our food waste too, so maybe the slugs don’t like slithering over the shards, though I think that might be my wishful thinking!
This is my first year of no dig and I live in a part of Britain with its fair share of wet weather like today, but the two large raised beds filled with 6in municipal compost in March have been almost untouched by the slugs. We did have a very dry spring though, when the young plants were most vulnerable. Will be interesting to check how the lettuce sown later do after this wet spell. Maybe the driest April followed by the wettest June for many years is not the best for comparing against previous years