Flowers and vegetables will benefit from mulching

As I work in the garden, I sometimes plug in the old ear buds and listen to music. Sometimes, whatever is playing is perfectly suited to the task in hand. During the heat wave last week I was in the garden early, mulching the vegetable garden and the flower beds.

As I was forking mulch into the wheelbarrow, I found myself humming along to Chubby Checker singing “Let’s twist again like we did last summer.” It quickly became let’s mulch again since it’s what I do every summer — technically still spring but it felt like summer.

Mulching is what I do, and it pays off in so many ways. Mulch suppresses weeds, reduces evaporation, maintains soil temperature, and as it breaks down nutrients are returned to the soil. Depending on the material, it also enhances the appearance of landscaped areas. I mostly see flower beds in front yards mulched with wood chips, and it does add to the appearance, although I’m not too keen on the coloured stuff. I prefer a more natural look there.

In the backyard where all my flower and vegetable beds are, I use a nutrientrich, esthetically pleasing material. OK, I use semi-rotted leaves, but the word rotted isn’t the most appealing term, so I’ll stick with partially decomposed. It’s completely natural, just the same way the forest floor is mulched.

My leaf mulch comes from the bags I collected last fall. Providing the leaves were wet as I piled them, by now they’ve broken down and matted together enough to use as mulch. If I didn’t use it now, after a year or two decomposition would continue and it would eventually become leaf mould, an excellent soil amendment.

I don’t use dry leaves as mulch as they’d be blowing everywhere. The only minor problem I have is with robins. They do like to flip the leaves over onto the pathway when looking for bugs to feed their fledglings. Sweeping a few leaves off occasionally is a lot easier than weeding, and I don’t have to do much of that because it’s only a random one that makes an appearance.

Mulch is ideal for vegetable beds, especially raised beds filled with soil that, depending on the source, can arrive already seeded with weeds. Even if the soil is initially free of them, weeds will show up and frequent hoeing soon becomes tedious.

In many flower beds, the plants grow large enough that they shade the soil, but in vegetable beds where plants are given space, more soil is exposed to the sun and wind. On a dry, windy day, the top inch or two of soil, right where seedlings are trying to establish roots, dries out fast. This is an issue with currently popular raised beds enclosed with lumber as they tend to dry out much faster than in-ground beds and need to be watered more frequently. Mulch will greatly reduce the amount of water needed by reducing evaporation.

I mulch everything in sight, including my planters. Weeds aren’t much of an issue here, but evaporating water is. Same as the flower beds, plants eventually grow big enough to shade the soil, but when first planted up, the soil is more exposed. I don’t use the leaves in planters. I prefer coir mulch, but wood chips or small pebbles are fine. Even so, in the heat of summer, some planters need watering twice a day.

So, mulch where you can and you’ll grow bigger, beautiful plants, like my wallflowers that are blooming now. And you’ll be singing in the garden, hopefully not the Beatle’s “Twist and Shout” — there can be a lot of that when filling a wheelbarrow.

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