Homegrown mulch keeps gardens healthy, weed-free
My wife and I have been gardening together for almost 40 years and one thing I've noticed is the tremendous value of mimicking nature in specific ways. Mulching is perhaps the clearest example. In the same way that nature almost always covers soil with some kind of leaf litter or ground cover, you'll get amazing benefits doing the same thing in many of your gardens, especially perennial gardens. Mulching can also let you close the loop when it comes to making use of the branches, leaves and nutrients that every yard produces, turning troublesome waste into a valuable resource. That's what we do at our place, and it all comes down to a chipper.
We maintain more than 1,000 square feet of perennial gardens at our country home on Manitoulin Island, Ont., and these gardens never get tilled, dug or weeded. We don't have to do any of this because the constant layer of three to four inches of compacted mulch we maintain on the soil prevents weeds from ever growing, though that's just one of the benefits. Constantly increasing nutrient and organic-matter levels are another advantage of a continuous cover of mulch. Simply put the mulch on top of the soil without digging it in, and you're done.
If you added it all up, most of our gardens have digested a total of two or three feet of solid, compacted wood chip mulch over the decades, and it shows. The organic-matter content of our perennial garden soil is a whopping eight per cent, compared with the three per cent organic-matter levels in the same soil in our fields, which haven't been mulched. Nutrients also take care of themselves with constant mulching (we never fertilize and yet have big, luxurious plants). Then there's moisture retention. If we experience a rip-roaring drought in our area, our mulched perennial beds are the last to show the strain.
Mulching also offers another benefit, one that lightens the load on landfills.
A vital key to making mulch a regular part of your gardening life is having a ready source of mulch. Many people buy bags of mulched cedar bark or other materials but there are two problems with this. First, bagged mulch is expensive, given how much is required for even a small garden. And second, bagged mulch does nothing to stop the outflow of nutrients and organic matter leaving your yard and property and going to waste. To make something different happen you need something to produce mulch from the varied sources of garden waste you produce in your yard. This is one reason they invented a gas-powered machine called a chipper/ shredder.
Take tree branches, leaves, plant stalks, pine needles or any other kind of garden waste, feed this into a chipper/shredder and out comes finely chopped organic matter for your garden, ready to use. It's a great thing. This is why some people call chipper/shredders “fertilizer machines,” because they make unusable sources of garden waste into something you can apply to your garden and benefit from. Easy to roll out and handy to use, chipper/shredders can boost your gardening self-sufficiency and success. There's no way we would ever have the gardening results we do without a constant thick layer of mulch.
Besides the horticultural benefits, a chipper/shredder also makes it easier to keep your yard looking tidy. You can reduce the volume of garden waste by a factor of at least 10 by shredding and chipping, and you can do it as you produce the waste. No need to stockpile ugly heaps of branches, cuttings and clippings until the municipal pickup day happens, assuming it happens at all.
Steve Maxwell likes the look of mulched soil best. Visit him online at Baileylineroad.com and join 32,000+ people who get his free email newsletter every Saturday morning.