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Mulches ain’t Mulches

There is a lot of conjecture out there about what is a mulch and how thick should it be? And a whole range of other questions that I will endeavour to answer or set straight in this article. This is of course in my opinion and based on my own experience of over 40 years of growing my own food and fruit on urban blocks of land.

  1. Pebbles/Stones: Not mulch heats up during day and radiates warmth into soil sending composting insects deep.
  2. Lucerne: Not mulch too open and is full of nitrogen and really is meant as a green manure so good in the compost or turned into the ground.
  3. Pea Straw: Not mulch to open just like Lucerne makes a great green manure.

Let’s look at what are mulches?

  1. Bark/Wood Chips: Great for native gardens, but not so good for edibles. It can leech Nitrogen out of the soil and deposit sap’s and resins which aren’t good for edibles.
  2. Sugarcane: This is an adequate mulch for edibles it takes about 12 months to break down.
  3. Bamboo Mulch: Like sugar cane also good for edibles with a similar break down time.
  4. Whoflungdung: This is an activated mulch and best I have used to date albeit a little more expensive but gives you great results being bio-active.

Ok so how thick should it be applied? 25mm and no more I find any thicker and you miss out on good water penetration, thicker layer of mulch you will find after watering for a decent time, when you check all you have managed to do is water the mulch layer and not the soil. Not so long ago the thinking was to put mulch on a minimum of 100mm thick, this is no longer the recommendation.

In my opinion soil in any garden bed with or without plants should never be without mulch! Applying mulch has quite a few benefits for you and your garden that I think a lot of people miss. Just by its presence it will increase the microbial activity in the soil as it slowly starts to break down, and ultimately adding nourishment over time. The cover of mulch will also inhibit weed growth as it blocks out one of the three things weeds need to germinate, water, food, and light, it won’t stop all of them but it certainly helps keep them down. It is a great insulator for the soil as in the cooler months it keeps the soil a little warmer assisting those plants that are not dormant to grow a little better, and in the summer it keeps the soil cooler stopping evaporation and leaving the soil moister than it would be if it weren’t there.

One of the biggest impacts mulching has on your garden is that it allows the composting insects cover from the sun, cooling the soil and keeping it moist and they return to the surface under the cover of the much eating away at it turning it into rich friable soil. This causes aeration in the soil as these insects and invertebrates move about in the soil turning the soil over for you saving you the hard work, “I don’t know about you but I am a big advocate of not having a dog and barking too.”

I don’t turn my soil over hardly ever, I let them do the hard work. A garden bed without mulch doesn’t have this activity going on in it, as the composting insects are down deeper in the soil up to 200mm deep where the soil is moist and cool even in the winter months. So you can see mulch is vitally important. All of this ensures that when you water you will get fantastic water penetration where it is needed. Without mulch the soil becomes hard and dry and dehydrated the composting insects travel down into the soil deep where it is cool and your soil becomes hard to work. Take the hard work out of gardening and mulch it, you will be surprised in the change.

I even use mulch in the top of my potted plants, you will be surprised at what a difference it will make to the amount you water them and to the health of the plant or tree.

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