Why is mulching important? Well, it...
- Inhibits weed germination and growth.
- Holds in soil moisture, protecting your plants from drying out quickly (which is especially important here in the high desert)
- Helps protect soil from splashing or eroding in wet, rainy conditions
- Moderates soil-temperature fluctuations (which can help to limit the amount of stress on your plants)
- Protects plant roots from winter cold and helps prevent frost-heaving
- Helps keep plant roots cooler during hot conditions
- Can add a bit of nutrition to your soil structure as it breaks down and encourages beneficial soil organisms and worms
- Can be aesthetically pleasing to the eye
We not use only mulch in our garden beds, but we use it on the paths as well. However, mulch can be an incredibly expensive addition to our landscape!
Over the years we have played with a couple of different options and have decided that we prefer to use wood chip mulch on our paths and straw as mulch in our beds. We purchase our straw through the Feed Bin (where we also purchase our chicken feed and dog food) and we used to have a wonderful local greenhouse/garden store where you could buy a variety of mulch by the yard...but they closed down last year after too many years of a challenging economy. This closure limited our choices when it came to where we could buy mulch (you know, besides all those big box stores), as well as seeds, veggie starts, berry bushes, fruit trees and pretty much every garden purchase you can imagine (it was a very sad closure).
Luckily though, we recently learned that, if you load it yourself, the mulch at our Buckman Road Recycling Center is free as part of their whole green recycling initiative! Really, anything free is awesome in my book, however, not only is it free, it is actually pretty! Well, once it rains on it and washes all of the dust away, it's very pretty!
I guess that if perfection was our goal, this would not be the mulch for us. It is not uniform in size or shape and you do have to pick a few pieces of trash out of it (small pieces of paper and plastic are the most common items we've found). However, perfection is not our goal, coverage is! So, yes, free mulch really is the best mulch for us!
Do you use mulch in your yard or in your beds? What kind of mulch do you use and where do you get it?
xoxo,
M
Linking up to the Homestead Barn Hop #121,
Well, I have to admit we get our mulch from the big box stores, and use some straw, also. I should be taking myself over to a friend's, though... she has piles of manure that has composted already, and i should be using this free source, just like you are!
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful to have access to such a manure/compost source! I do know, though, that often it can be easier to hit the big box stores than it is to shovel it all yourself. That's where they make all their money. I was very tempted to just say, "Forget it!" and do the same after run # 3 or 4, but we stuck it out...this time :-)
DeleteOh, I wish we had something like that. Where my brother lives, in Albany, you can pay $7 for a pickup truck load of either much (dyed and uniform), screened compost, or unscreened compost. That's what you get when you live in the city. Here, in the "sticks", we have no real infrastructure, so we're all on our own. I use whatever we have--grass clippings, dry leaves, chicken bedding, rabbit bedding, or old ruined hay from the goats. If I can throw it in my wheelbarrow, I use it!
ReplyDeleteEverything you mentioned works perfectly! Infrastructure is something that we totally take for granted, though! We fantasize about being self-sufficient, but the reality of it is something entirely foreign to us. Some day we might just get to learn the hard way...we'll see ;-)
DeleteWe used to purchase some but it is prohibitively expensive, so now we make our own, well nature does most of the work. We have always had a "mulching mower", we rake up leaves, small sticks and some grass onto "windrows" attach the catcher to the mulching mower (which has one single blade) and run along the raked up row. It cuts it into uneven pieces which is great as it allows better water penetration than equal length-ed mulch that you typically find with straw and or sugar cane mulch (the two most popular commercial mulches here in Aus)
ReplyDeleteProbably takes us two hours and a litre (1/4 gallon) of petrol (gasoline) to make enough mulch for 3 months. One of us on the mower, one on the wheel barrow to cart it away and stack it somewhere convenient
You can see it near the bottom of this blog post
http://menuchanechona.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/garden.html
If you had some space you could just grow comfrey, and then every now and again attack it with a whipper snipper (weed eater) and rake it into piles. We get plenty using our method but use the comfrey we do grow in a comfrey tea for liquid fertilizing and in the compost piles and as greens for the chickens.
Garden Paths
We just use thick cardboard from the skip (dumpster) from the back of a local white goods retailer. They don't mind as it saves them paying to get rid of it and it's free and it breaks down fairly easily.
Sounds like you have it all down to a science, Trevor! I love the idea of the mulching mower! I'll have to look into getting one when we get a bigger piece of property! I like the idea of the comfrey tea, too!
DeleteBeware your free mulch source. We got several loads from the electric company as they were trimming lines in our area. One had bindweed in it unbeknownst to us and we've been fighting it in our garden ever since!!
ReplyDeleteI have heard that some locals have experienced a rise in grasshoppers after grabbing some of the free mulch, but I have not seen a problem and am hopeful it skipped us. Time will tell. If it gets bad, I'll unleash the chickens on 'em ;-)
DeleteFree mulch?? That's awesome! It makes me want to put out feelers for free wood chips in our areas as well - I have an awful time keeping grass out of our walkways between our raised beds. Like you we use straw as mulch for our raised-bed veggies since it breaks down each year to improve our soil more & more. Helpful since we planted our house & raised beds in the middle of a cow pasture! LOL (visiting from the Homestead Barn Hop)
ReplyDelete~Taylor-Made Ranch~
Wolfe City, Texas
That pesky grass! It will find a way to come up where ever it can, won't it?! I definitely recommend putting feelers out. Another thing that happens is, after Christmas, the city chips up all the Christmas trees and leaves it around town for people to pick up. That may be an option for you as well.
DeleteThat's great you can find your mulch for free! What a great deal.
ReplyDeleteI agree Mulch makes such a difference in gardening!
Thanks for sharing with the HomeAcre hop. I hope you join us again Thursday!
http://www.mittenstatesheepandwool.com