I've just put in a big garden, 60'x14', with tomatoes, peppers, herbs, musk melons, peas, cucumbers, and strawberries. It's weed free at the moment but that can't last. Any suggestions mulch? I'm thinking straw or peat moss. I'm told that bark mulch is a bad idea.
Mulch does so much for a garden. It help retains water, prevents water from splashing up on the leaves, repels slugs and snails, dissuades weeds, promotes a better environment for beneficial insects...etc etc.
Straw would work great. Perhaps peat combined with the straw would be better than peat alone. In order to stop the slugs and snails, you need to ensure there are rough surfaces among the mulch (the rough surface tears up the soft bellies of the buggers). Bark mulch is okay as long as it's "mulch" and not bark chips or nuggets. The slugs would just make houses out of them.
I use cedar mulch on everything. Awesome stuff.
..
Zone 5a in Canada's Far East
We use newspaper, three layers, covered with grass clippings and chopped up leaves. Straw should work fine but you should check the pH of your soil before adding peat moss, peat moss is pretty acidic. HTH
George
Straw is full of seeds and could cost more than you might like to spend to get good coverage.
Peat moss blows away easily.
Getting all those bales of straw or peat to your location may be a problem unless you have access to a truck or pay for delivery.
Leaf mold is good mulching material and it/s often free for the hauling, but you still need a truck.
Grass clippings are free and conveniently located near your garden.
My garden is a bit smaller than yours (40' x 16'). I plant in 4' wide beds with ~2' wide strips of grass in between the beds. It/s easy to maintain and highly productive. Once the plants begin to mature, they produce their own 'weed controling, moisture conserving mulch' as the foliage from the high-density planting shades the ground. Weeds between the beds are controlled with the lawn mower.
my 2 cents worth, I agree with bark as being a bad idea, even for a flower garden. I have had trouble with it in every house where it has been. People have given you some good advice on mulches, I am going to throw in a few alternatives for you to consider. Spent mushroom compost I have found to be a good mulch and it is cheap (or sometimes free) as it is a waste product from mushroom farms. Untreated sawdust also makes for a thick weed barrier. It can be a problem absorbing rain when you want it on the garden. I have tried alternating layers of saw dust and used coffee grounds which are very good at suppressing weeds and grasses though I have not used them on vege gardens. Best of all both come free. If you have stables near by you can get free the stable scrapings of horse shit mixed with either straw or wood shavings. My rule of thumb is if it is free and a waste by product that it preferable to paying. I am using saw dust, coffee grounds and stable scraping round my garden at present. I have even seen people use kitchen waste, potato peels, orange peels, tea bags and the like as mulch.
rob
You are looking at 4 to 8 cubic yards depending on how thick you lay it and if you do the paths. I don't now about where you are but enough peat moss for that garden would cost a bomb where I am. I agree that bark or wood chip is not suitable except for paths.
Look around your area for sources of material. Hay, straw, spent mushroom compost, rotted ground-up tree trimmings are just a few possibilities. Check out the price including delivery. Hay that is too spoiled for animal consumption may be quite cheap and can make fine mulch.
Look carefully at the material and where it came from. It is possible that it contains seeds and rubbish that you don't want, it is also possible that it is fine, there are no hard and fast rules. Consider straw, it depends on what crop the straw is derived from, how well it was taken off when harvested and what weeds (if any) were cut along with it.
David
Grass clippings are a good, renewable source of mulch that disappears within the season. The cons, at least at my place, is that they seem to attract voles in a way no other mulch does. It is the best mulch to be added under existing plants, because it is light and fluffy and does not hurt them.
Leaf mold has the same qualities as clippings (renewable, disappears), and makes the best soil in my experience. That is where I like to plant my greens next year. Because some leaves tend to mat it is not so easy to add under existing plants, and also leaves at the top tend to blow and cover seedlings.
Wood chips last much longer (two years, and the biggest chunks much longer than that), and acidify the soil. On ground that has been covered with wood chips, you can only plant selected vegetables, which stand coarse, acid soil, for maybe three years. Greens and cabbages will struggle there. They ultimately make good humus though, simply because when you mulch with them you are adding a lot more mass. If you have thin soil, you could consider using it on a fraction of your garden.
Manure contains too many seeds, though I lay it before covering with one of the other mulches here. So does straw. Peat moss is for billionaires.
Cardboard, covered with a thin layer of mulch, is also pretty good and mostly disappears within the year. Or use newspapers if you have them. The only con is that you have to level the ground underneath very well. If not, water will initially run to the lowest point, and also there will be seedlings that are below the cardboard. I use cardboard with radicchio, which has big taproots and survives the winter here. In the spring I need to kill it. It will push through anything except cardboard.
I put landscape fabric under my cedar mulch. It's been out there for two years now and show no sign of disappearing any time soon.
..
Landscaping fabric... topped with pine shavings.
Of all the mulches I've tried, pine shavings (or bags of leaves that can be scavenged from all over town) have worked the best. :-)
Cedar? Really? Cedar shavings killed anything I ever tried them with, including tomatoes. ;-( That's why I switched to pine.
Be cautious with straw or hay. It tends to be full of weed seeds.
I've had grass clippings take root if they had any joints/rhizome remnants.
Nah. ;-) People throw out bags of leaves all over town all the time. Just cruise the ritzier parts of town where folks pay to have people rake leaves. The bags are on the curb and you can toss some in the trunk, back seat and passenger side.
Just make sure it's just clippings, and not strands of grass. Since I have bermuda, it's been a problem to try to use them. I had to quit. The damned things took root.
I do have a giant pile of leaf mulch next to the garden, I've been piling my leaves there for over 20 years, maybe it's time to use it.
That is a myth. Something else killed the tomatoes, not the cedar shavings.
Zone 5a in Canada's Far East.
"David Hare-Scott" wrote | Look carefully at the material and where it came from. It is possible that | it contains seeds and rubbish that you don't want, it is also possible that | it is fine, there are no hard and fast rules. Consider straw, it depends on | what crop the straw is derived from, how well it was taken off when | harvested and what weeds (if any) were cut along with it.
I always get wheat straw for mulching. It's a little more expensive but worth it in the long run. There's not as much 'junk' in it as regular straw.
For mulch I use discarded household leavings (fruit, veggies, egg shell, coffee grounds) along with pecan and oak leaves. A few layers of newspaper and some wheat straw on top.
Kimberly
[snip]
Really? What do you use for mulch that repels? Mine always seems to keep things moist & cozy for slugs -- though I'd agree that the positive aspects of mulch usually outweigh this serious problem.
-f
g;day g.s,
my favourite mulches are the green types ie.,. spoilt lucerne hay & pasture grass hay, i use these all the time and never need to fertilise, never weed mygardens and minimal watering, but then i lay it around 8 to 10"s thick.
On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 17:52:40 -0400, General Schvantzkoph snipped With peace and brightest of blessings,
len
-- "Be Content With What You Have And May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In A World That You May Not Understand."
It definitely repels slugs and snails. I caught them at night having a buffet on my flowers last year before I put a layer of mulch down...then the flowers flourished. I've yet to find one in the mulch.
I have my raised beds surrounded by mulch and usually put landscape fabric under it. I'll find the odd slug under there but the fabric is stabled to the raised bed, so they can't take the tunnel route.
..
Zone 5a in Canada's Far East.
good one Len, get the cheap/free stuff an use it thickly. I nabbed a load of free spoiled hay and went back for more but found someone else had flogged it.
rob
I can get at least three bags in the trunk, three in the back seat, and one on the passenger side, and I drive a compact sedan. The best bags are full but not really heavy. (So not only do I drive around picking up other people's bags of leaves, I'm *picky* about it.)
These get shredded each fall and compressed and bagged. Then I mix them with a small portion of cocoa shells before mulching everything. Yes, the cocoa shells are pricey. And as a solo mulch cocoa shells tend to mat up and mold. Leaves can sometimes mat when used alone, too. But mix some cocoa shells into the leaves--no matting. Plus, the cocoa shells will persist as the leaves dissapear.
(If I'm mulching where I've been having trouble with cats, I up the proportion of cocoa shells in the mulch--the cats don't seem to like it.)
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.