Garden Mulch Explained
As municipalities across the country impose water restrictions, a mulch becomes a gardener's best friend. In my own gardens, I've use leaves from last year as a mulch over the entire garden and they're doing their thing quite nicely now.
I was at a garden this past weekend that used mushroom compost as a mulch. The gardener bought it by the truckload and spread it approximately a half inch thick over the vegetable garden. She said the worms got most it by the end of August but by then it had done its duty of smothering out weeds in the vegetable patch and keeping her ground a little cooler.
Salt didn't seem to be a problem in these small quantities (thicker applications would have been a problem) and given that the worms are eating it that quickly, it is turning into high quality fertilizer very fast.
I'm still not a fan of using mushroom compost in large quantities as mulch nor does the analysis of it suggest it is good fertilizer. Rather it is excellent marketing on the part of the mushroom factories to get rid of their waste material. But a little bit seems to work for this gardener and as the price is right for her (her husband is a trucker) this would work.
Wood Chips
Wood chips are another common mulch and these work quite nicely in gardens.
I saw several large beds with the coloured mulch and I have to say that I think this product is quite hideous-looking (but what do you really think Doug?).
If you can see the mulch in my gardens, it means I've failed as a gardener
I like a mulch that disappears into the background, one that serves a function in the garden without being obvious about its existence.
For me, the stars of the garden are the flowers and leaves rather than the ground and anything that competes with the flowers for colour is taking away from the visual impact of the plants. The coloured mulches scream across the garden and take away from the visual effect of the plants they are supposed to be helping. I know there's a lot of this stuff sold right now but I'd rather get my colour from the shrubs and flowers and not the mulch. I can't even begin to tell you how bright one garden area was with literally tons of the stuff spread around the garden.
Stone as Mulch
I was also asked about using stone on gardens this past week and my take on that is that it is fine if the garden is an alpine garden and meant to be rocky.
It is also fine if you're not planning on every digging in the garden again and like the look of stone.
But, if you ever plan on planting something in there and digging around in it, stone makes a terrible mulch. You'll wind up burying some of it as you dig and you're not going to be happy.
And to make things even more interesting, I think weeds like to germinate faster in stone mulches than in bare soil or bark type mulches.
Unless you have a real reason to use stone, I'd stay away from it.
Little Known and Discussed
One of the things I've had trouble with this season under my mulch is slugs and snails. The dampness has made them quite happy and they've been eating some of the emerging perennial shoots before they can reach through the mulch. I discovered this by accident this past week when I was about to replace a plant I thought had died over the winter.
Instead of dying, it was trying to throw shoots but they were being eaten as fast as it could grow new ones.
I pulled the garden mulch away from the plant and let the immediate area around it (12 inch circle) dry out so the slugs won't venture there. I have high hopes for new shoots and leaves by the end of the week.
I've lost perennials in the past and now I'm starting to wonder how many I've lost to aggressive slugs under the mulch.
So from now on, I'm going to leave a small circle of unmulched ground around each perennial when planting and growing. It never ceases to amazes me what I'll learn the hard way when it comes to gardening.
Digging in Wood Chips
I know that some folks ask about what happens when you accidentally dig some garden mulch into the soil. This happens, particularly in flower beds, when you are digging and planting in close quarters.
This material is mostly composed of cellulose so fungi are going to attack it. This is fine and will not be a problem to the normal soil biology other than you'll be giving a source of food to fungi.
They'll break it down and make it available to other soil microorganisms.
If there's nitrogen in the mulch, then good bacteria will attack it and make that nitrogen available to the plants. The problem comes in when the bacteria demand nitrogen to live themselves while they're working and this demand can strip down the amounts of available nitrogen in your garden.
If you're only accidentally burying a little here and there, you won't see a problem in your garden.
I know that some folks tell you that burying garden mulch will rob the garden of nitrogen and this may be true if you're burying cellulose products in large numbers but the odd chunk or three of mulch isn't going to hurt anything.
And wood chip garden mulch that is simply on top of the soil isn't going to hurt a thing.
But mulch on the garden is a good thing for our plants and as long as you stay away from that coloured stuff, you won't go wrong.
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Doug's Mulch Pile in the Spring
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