MULCH - Q & A

[mnjrutherford]

One of the soundest pieces of advice I've received on the forum was, "MULCH girl, MULCH!"

At the time, it was a bit beyond my capabilities, but it was in my goal basket. This will be the year of mulch! Already, the thick pine needle blanket applied to our potato patch is paying off.

HOWever, I'm also using straw on a mixed use plot. In particular, the front half of the plot which is planted with a row each of beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, kale, iceberg lettuce, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, and mustard.

The new question is WHEN? Right after planting? Once things are sprouting? A few inches tall? When?

Also, is there an ideal depth? The pine needles are at least a couple of inches deep. Should the straw be as deep?

One of the benefits I'm looking forward to the most is a decreased need to wash greens in particular because there will be less dirt splashing up on the leaves.

[ottawagardener]

How's the answer: it depends

When:

I wait until the soil has thawed in the spring- less of an issue for you, and is adequately warm for the crop. For cool season growers, I add more mulch early. For warm lovers, I wait awhile and often use plastic mulch too but I think that's less of an issue for you. I commonly apply mulch in the spring either after self sowers are up and vigorously growing or right away if I'm planting starts. If I'm seeding something like lettuce or beets, I might throw some soil / finished compost / well rotted manure on top of the winter thinned mulch, let them germinate, wait until after the first thinning, then mulch. I also apply mulch in the fall around my perrenials when it's available in quantity: dried grass/leaves etc... along with compost. During the year, I top up mulch when it's becomes available on thin spots. You can also hill up certain plants with mulch like potatoes though I don't have much experience with that.

Thickness

Depends on what you are trying to achieve but if it is weed exclusion and water retention then a few inches is generally required but it depends on the material being used. Coarse pieced mulch like straw requiring more thickness. Leaves, in my experience, especially if whole only need a bit more than an inch as they matt together - creating different issues though none that I've had much problem with. I think you'll have to experiment with how fast mulch breaks down in your garden and what kind of weeds you have. If there are lots of deep rooted perennials, you should probably put down cardboard, thoroughly wet, then the mulch on top.

Planting and Mulch:

Anything that's put in as a start like tomatoes, garlic etc... only requires that you move aside some mulch and stick in.

Anything that is normally directed seeded but has big seeds like peas or beans can often by pushed in through aged mulch.

Anything with small seeds, especially requiring light to germinate needs the mulch to be pushed aside or a layer of dirt-like material to be added on top.

Hope that's helpful.

[raymondo]

Each of us will have different methods. Here's what I do. Winter, use plants instead of mulch, with some bare soil. This is to discourage slugs as winter is their prime time here. When the soil is warm enough for cucurbits to sprout happily, I start to mulch with whatever's at hand, never more than an inch or two thick. I move the mulch aside to plant, just enough not to smother whatever it is.
The only exception is garlic. I plant this in autumn then cover with mulch, usually straw, 3 to 4 inches. It pushes its way through without a worry.

[bertiefox]

I tried deep mulch for a number of years, which certainly cut down on the summer weeding and other work. However, leaving it alone in autumn over winter, next spring the area was absolutely choked with thick weed growth, both perennials from underneath, and weed seeds in the mulch itself.
I then had to spend just as long weeding and preparing ground as before.
The easy answer, I guess, is to mulch again in late winter or early spring before the weeds grow again, but even living in the countryside, I find it difficult to access sufficient mulch materials to do this each year.
How do others cope? Perhaps it would be better to sow a green manure in autumn after harvesting.

[heidihi]

I turn into mulch compost everything I possibly can in an effort to reduce garbage going to the landfills (since it is all shipped out of Washington now I try extra hard to decrease my waste)

I do the heavy mulch in the spring and fall ..then in between when I think it needs it ..if I need to weed then I mulch mulch mulch!
I make chips from all the prunnings and actually run over my leaves and non seedy weeds with the lawn mower a few times to chop it up then toss it a pile to let it rot a bit before putting it around the plants ..I use my chicken litter after it sits for six months and rots ..less than six months here turns it right into compost but I still wait to be sure it is good and cold ...I have used bailed straw but NEVER again is full of seeds here!! If it is free and can be used as mulch I will use it as mulch ..I have been known to stop on my way home from work to pick up windfall and chip it up!

I lay down newspaper a lot of times and then mulch over it if there is a spot I want the weeds dead ....or I plant more ground cover and plants to cover the spots the weeds like

to kill weed seeds I makes sure the compost gets good and hot....if I get behind on my weeding .. a few always slip throught but I never intentionally put seedy weeds in the compost bin they go off to the city's compost pile for them to deal with

[ottawagardener]

In the city, I normally had enough leaves, grass clippings and compost to cover my very big gardens though I would also occasionally get some manure. I never had an issue with overgrowth of weeds late next spring if I remembered to remulch after the self sowers were up and growing though I did do some weeding throughout the year and dug out some perennial rootstocks that would be a problem. After a couple of years, I mostly only had weedlings that I wanted like kale and coriander.

A chipper: That's on my wish list.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Apr 15, 2011 6:27:43 GMT -5 bertiefox said:

I find it difficult to access sufficient mulch materials to do this each year.
How do others cope?

No mulching for me... Living in the countryside, and in the desert we don't have readily available excess organic materials of acceptable quality.

There is the local government recycling plant, but their mulch is contaminated by sewer sludge, contains lawn chemicals, and is filled with wood chips. Not the kind of thing I would care to add to my garden.

Manure is full of weed seeds and potentially harmful bacteria.

My strategy for weeding is to slice off the top 1/4" of soil with a blade just after the weeds have sprouted. Mulch interferes with my ability to do that because of the large clumps of bark and stick fragments. If I mulched I'd have to weed by hand. Yuck!!!!

I don't let people take corn stalks out of my garden for animal food: they are too valuable to me as humus.

I allow the weeds to grow in some parts of the garden until May or June. I treat them as a cover crop. Based on how my feral wheat crop is growing, I'm thinking that a winter wheat or rye might be a great cover crop for my garden.

Besides, have you ever touched mulch? Yuck! and what about that smell? Uuurf.

[steev]

Joseph: I think you're confusing a particular product that is used to mulch with the process of mulching. I agree that sewage-plant waste isn't necessarily something I'd want to use, either, but if I didn't mulch, the dry breeze on my high-plainsish farm environment would suck the water out faster than I can pour it on. I think mulching cuts my water need about 50%.

I avoid mulching with anything I can't till in easily, so I avoid stuff that's too twiggy or fibrous. I use a lot of leaves, rabbit bedding, straw, old manure, and compost. This season's mulch is next season's soil amendment.

The important part in that is that the mulch is less fine-pored than the bare soil, so there is less wicking-off of water. Mostly I mulch as soon as my plants are large enough not to get lost in a couple inches of straw. What I have is mainly oat straw, but I'll have more wheat and barley straw as my plantings increase.

Further, the mulch covers my drip tubing, so that my plants aren't being cooked by solar-heated water. It took me a while to figure that out. "Why do the plants at the end of the tubes die so often?" Duh.

[mjc]

Joseph, there is a very old term for what you are doing...dust mulching. Keeping that top 1/4 to 1" weed free and cultivated does act as a mulch, but one of the least effective ones.

The weeding issue is an entirely different matter though. A good heavy mulch of organic materials will suppress the weeds, enough that hand weeding isn't that much of a problem.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Apr 15, 2011 14:01:14 GMT -5 mjc said:

Joseph, there is a very old term for what you are doing...dust mulching. Keeping that top 1/4 to 1" weed free and cultivated does act as a mulch, but one of the least effective ones.

Dust mulching is very economical though.... The only cost is my labor, and I'm going to be weeding anyway.

Apr 15, 2011 14:01:14 GMT -5 mjc said:

The weeding issue is an entirely different matter though. A good heavy mulch of organic materials will suppress the weeds, enough that hand weeding isn't that much of a problem.

How deep is a "heavy mulch". Running some [oops, amended] calculations: If I were to put a 2" deep layer of mulch on my garden, it would take around 107 large (10 yard) dump truck loads (800 pickup truck loads). The price would be around $13,000. Sheesh! No wonder mulch creeps me out. And would that need to be an every year expense? If I had that kind of money to spend I'd put it into more land, not into mulch.

[paquebot]

Mulching for me has been shredded oak and maple leaves for many years. Sometimes it's quite thick, up to 6" in the potato patch. NPK values are comparable to some farm manures. Also has the added advantage of adding humus to the soil. Remains intact long enough to deter germination of most annual weeds and yet is out of the way for fall harvest or soil preparation.

Martin

[steev]

Yes, the trick is to mulch with whatever you'd want to add as soil amendments. Let the worms drag it in for you, until you get around to tilling it. Trying to do the whole place in one shot would be a burden, but if you keep your eyes peeled for whatever would serve, bit by bit you can make progress.

That dust mulch practice was heavily promoted in the 30's, and contributed its share to the dust storms that occurred then.

[ottawagardener]

Of course green manuring that is winter killed can act as mulch as can relatively weedless cuttings. I know someone (on here?) that planted successive crops of corn and strawberries and something else into one another without clearing debris. I suppose they didn't have disease issues or they weren't serious. Anyhow, he used the previous crop as mulch. Interesting.

[grunt]

Telsing, what you describe is what I am about to start doing, while still adding mulch. Should be interesting to see what happens.

[mnjrutherford]

Golly! I'm glad I asked! We have several different things going for mulch at this point at time. Our goal is to have the maple and oak leaf "stuff" that Martin is using because from what I am understanding of my reading it has pretty much the best chemical release and functionality. We have to grow out our own trees for this because we haven't been very successful acquiring stuff from neighbors. Pine needles we can get, not oak/maple. When our potatoes went in, they got a thick blanket of pine needles. That appears to be working better than the straw for keeping out the weeds. The garlic and onions also have pine needles but not as thick and the weeds are coming through but not to bad. The straw, at this point (really to early to give a good assessment) is no real barrier against weeds. Also, it's difficult to weed through because you pull up straw WITH the weeds.

I think that is in part because I seeded UNDER the straw? So, the next thing will be to spread straw and put seedlings into it. Summer squashes and melons, weather permitting. The tomato field still needs to be burned before anything goes into it. Then, assuming things go well with the squashes, straw first followed by seedlings.

Joseph, your situation is pretty unique. I have a pretty good idea what your situation is like but minus the snow. We traveled from the Bay Area, over the mountains into Nevada, then up to the Oregon/Idaho border for annual family reunions. The plant life exists, but it's not lush by any means.

Ya know.... What I'm thinking is that guineas might be a good thing for you to have. They are from an arrid environment. They only need about half the amount of "imported" food that a chicken would need. The eggs are better than chicken in my opinion, though only available for a limited season from early spring through August. They are excellent parents contrary to what I've heard from others and keep each other company so work well as a group. They keep the insect population under control rather effectively from what we are currently observing. It would be intense to work with a few pairs of adults or a number of keets going. You would want to start now. But once you have a hatch, they would be there to stay.

You could invest a little bit on straw for bedding and they would maximized its potential benefits for compost and winter cover which could enrich your soil greatly over time? I'm guessing here now. But, do you even have time to invest in this? They would be labor intensive at first, building a coop, keeping them locked up for a period of time to get them "acclimated" to your place because they will have a natural tendency to home. You'll have to get pairs, preferably mated, because they are monogamous and the family is everything to them.