Mulch and all its benefits
 (Read 500+ times)
By Glory Lennon
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Mulch is simply that which is used to cover bare soil. 3-4 inches of mulch provides plant roots protection from the elements, helps the soil retain moisture, serves as a weed block and often times provides organic material for our garden buddy, the worm. The worms help aerate and add organic material to the soil which in turn provide nutrients to plants. As Martha Steward would say, it’s a good thing.
In many Botanical gardens I’ve seen many different mulches used for sundry applications. I’ve seen leaf mold, shredded bark, cocoa shells, straw, shredded hardwood, hay, pine needles, grass clippings, compost, river rock, sea weed, pebbles, plastic sheeting, newspaper, peat moss, decorative stone, wood chips, sawdust, sea shells, rotted cow manure and even ground covers serve as a mulch. Certain mulches are better used in some ways than others.
To find the one best suited to your application certain things need to be considered. What are you planting? Where do you live? Is this a permanent planting of shrubs or pine trees or a constantly changing flower bed? Do you want something to last through your life time or something that will decompose and will eventually need to be added on to or replaced? Is weed blocking your main objective? Do you want a mulch to improve the soil? Do you want something virtually maintenance free? All these things will determine which type of material to use as a mulch.
I live in an area where there is readily available shredded hardwood and shredded bark mulch and sawdust from the local sawmill. There are also wood chips available free of charge from the local tree cutting crews which are always looking for someone to take this stuff off their hands. If I was living close to a beach instead of the mountains I might rely on seaweed, sea shells and marsh grass for mulching my plants. In desert areas where the plants are mostly the heat and drought tolerant cactus and succulents they mostly use pebbles. Down in tropical areas they often use cocoa shells and large leaves left whole and placed around plants to shade the soil. Folks living near farms could use hay, rotted animal manure or straw. And people living in or near pine forests would have plenty of pine needles for their use. It is advisable to use that which is readily available in your area to keep costs down and because the plants growing in your section of the world are very likely used to that kind. It just makes sense.
In my vegetable garden where I want to suppress weeds and provide a neat, clean place for produce to grow, I like to use thick sheets of newspaper and cover this up with grass clippings. At the end of the growing season I can either till all these materials right into the raised beds adding organic matter to improve the soil for the next season or rake it all up and toss it onto the compost pile. Either way nothing is lost except a place for weeds to grow. On a side note, researchers have proved red plastic sheeting used as a mulch around tomato plants actually makes them produce better. Mulch isn’t just for esthetics it seems.
In between the vegetable beds I like to put down black plastic sheeting and cover this up with sawdust. It helps to distinguish the planting beds from the paths and provides a soft, mud-free walking place and keeps it practically weed free. The sawdust is especially acidic making it unpalatable for weeds to grow.
In the perennial boarder I use hardwood mulch or the free wood chips. The plants enjoy the added protection the mulch provides in our harsh winters. It ensures the plants aren’t heaved out of the ground during our usual February thaw time. Mulch acts like a blanket in winter keeping the roots from damage due to freezing cold temperatures.
In summer mulch acts as a shade cloth cooling roots and not allowing the ground to dry out as quickly as it might without it . This hardwood mulch (especially the wood chips) decomposes slowly adding vital organic matter to my hideously heavy clay soil. Just from covering the soil with this stuff my soil is almost unrecognizable from when I first started creating my gardens. There is far more worm activity now which tells me the soil is much healthier and, in turn, makes my plants happy.
Where I wanted permanent plantings of Blue Rug Junipers (Juniperus horizantalis procumben) and another of Colorado Blue Spruces I put down black plastic sheeting first. I cut an “X” where I wanted a plant. I then planted the Junipers and spruces and pulled the sheeting up to the plant again and covered this plastic with decorative stone from our local quarry. It is rather pretty, virtually weed free and requires hardly any maintenance nor will it for many years to come.
In areas where I like to change things around consistently such as for annuals and perennials which need dividing often I put down bark mulch. This seems to decompose quickly so the soil is always replenished of nutrients. I simply rake back the mulch from around the plant when it needs to be divided, dig it out and replant elsewhere. In the case of annuals like Dahlia tubers or Marigolds I again pull back the mulch, plant these and push it back into place. If soil gets mixed in with the mulch it won’t matter. It all will get together eventually. That’s what the worms do, after all.
This makes a great growing area for self-sowing annuals and perennials but with that comes weeds. If it’s a great place for seed germination it’ll, unfortunately, also be good for weed seeds. The good with the bad, I guess, but if you pluck out the weeds when they are tiny it shouldn’t be a problem.
In my shade garden I let Mother Nature do the mulching for me. In Autumn the leaves fall from the trees covering everything. The leaves decompose at their leisure making that wonderful humus-rich soil associated with the forest. Leaf mold, as this decomposing material is called, is great in other parts of your garden. In the famous Rose gardens at Hershey Park they always use leaf mold to mulch the rose beds. They also use cocoa shells to mulch their shrub borders being they have a ready supply of them from the Hershey chocolate factory. It is nice walking around the garden smelling the roses plus you get that heavenly chocolate scent from the cocoa shells. What could be better?
Speaking of self-mulching reminds me of my daylily hill. This is a virtually maintenance-free place about fifty feet long and eight feet wide packed with daylilies and hardly a weed amongst them. At the end of the Autumn they mulch themselves with their own dying foliage. In spring the daylilies poke right out from amongst the old foliage. I barely have to do anything more than occasionally thin them out but my friends love it when I do this. They often get my extra plants, you see, and my daylilies get more room to grow. A win-win, wouldn’t you say?
The use of ground-covers as a mulch is along the same line as the daylily hill. The ones that grow densely packed such as Ajuga Carpet Bugle or Sedum Dragon’s Blood are best. I plant these around Rhododendrons and to cover visible tree roots. These living mulches do everything the other mulches do plus protecting tree roots from lawn mowers and weed whackers. They look very pretty especially in flower.
I even have come to use the sea shells we constantly collect at the many beaches we visit to mulch my house plants. Why my house plants? It keeps the cats from digging in them and using it as their litter box and it truly looks nice. I’ve used pine cones too and I sometimes get baby pine trees to plant out in the yard.
When to mulch is entirely up to you. Right before winter is best to ensure your plants have a proper protection from the winter cold but Spring time is great to put that fresh look to your flower beds. I hope all this helps you choose the best mulch for your specific needs. One thing I do know is once you start to use mulch you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it and your plants will wonder “What were you thinking?”
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Author Bio Box: Glory Lennon
 visit http://www.helium.com/users/32782 for more gardening fun, amusing short stories and fun novel excerpts.
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