Thick layers of mulching materials lessen the need for weeding and cultivating, conserve moisture (reducing the need for watering), and gradually build up soil fertility.
And they effectively lower the soil temperature, as the photographs on the left show, helping promote plant growth during hot weather. We, gardeners, should mulch whenever and wherever we can.
Any fibrous material may be used for mulching, and it is important to keep the mulch about 2” to 6” inches thick around trees, shrubs, roses, and most flowers, fruits, and vegetables.
Low-creeping plants, of course, cannot be mulched, but strawberries do fine when mulched heavily immediately after planting.
Suitable Mulching Materials
Straw, hay, grass clippings, dried weeds, excelsior, shredded paper, twigs, leaves, pecan, buckwheat, rice hulls, pine straw, sugar cane bagasse, shredded bark, wood chips, and peat moss are among the suitable mulching materials.
Leaves are best mixed with straw or chopped-up twigs, which prevent the leaves from packing into a solid mat. Loose or “fluffy” mulches are generally considered best.
Sawdust is a good mulch, but it is wise to add a dressing of high-nitrogen fertilizer to the soil before applying it.
As the sawdust decomposes, it borrows nitrogen from the soil. Many gardeners disregard this, however, feeling that the temporary decrease in nitrogen is more than offset by the eventual improvement sawdust makes in the soil.
Mulch stimulates plants during the growing season and serves as a valuable ground cover during the winter. Once weathered, it is not conspicuous or unsightly, but unsightly or not. It is a comforting sight to true gardeners.
Available Plastic Mulching Materials
If you cannot find mulching materials around your garden, and you discover that peat moss, ground corncobs, and the like are too expensive to use on a large scale, as in a vegetable or fruit garden, there are several plastic mulching materials available that you should investigate.
They reduce the need for cultivating, weeding, and conserving moisture, but they do not improve soil structure or add nutrients as the organic mulches do over the years.
Good Insulators
As the photographs show, mulches are good insulators. But a word of caution on this point. It has been found that if a mulch is placed around tender vegetables or annual flowers very early in spring, they may be damaged by frost, while unmulched plants of a similar kind are not.
A mulch acts as an insulating blanket, keeping the soil from warming up during the day and releasing heat at night. As a result, the soil cannot provide the warmth it normally would keep the tender plants from freezing on cold nights in the spring.
44659 by W. C. Vanderwerth