Mulching your garden is a cost-effective way to promote a healthier landscape with a lot less work. It blocks the germination of weeds. It cuts off the sunlight and reduces the number of weeds you need to contend with. It can also prevent sunlight from drying out your soil. Mulch also helps regulate the soil temperature in the winter and summer. This is especially important for more sensitive plants and roots. Mulch can also reduce the number of diseases in the soil by blocking disease spores from spreading. It can make a massive difference in a vegetable garden. So whether you’re buying the mulch yourself or creating it using a mulcher, it can be very beneficial.
Mulching Your Garden
Mulching improves your soil. As the mulch breaks down, it enriches the soil with nutrients for your plants. But don’t apply mulch deeper than 7 centimetres. Especially if there’s mulch already down and you plan to lay some fresh mulch, then ensure that they cumulatively do not add up to more than 7 to 7.5 centimetres. This is too much, and it’s going to cause problems for the good plants as well as the weeds that you want to keep down!
Never over-mulch around the base of trees
Very often, you’ll see raised mounds of mulch around trees and shrubs. This is not good, as while some mulch protects your plants, too much encourages disease and insects to accumulate. And while a bit of mulch can help prevent soil from drying out, too much creates a damp space around the wood which can cause rotting. Always leave a good distance from where you’re mulching to the tree. Spread the mulch a bit away from the base of the tree or shrub, and then you can lightly feather it towards the trunk. Ideally, your mulch should be tapering off as it moves towards the base of the shrub or tree.
Before you add more mulch, give it a turn
Mulching, when done correctly, should allow water, air and nutrients to pass through and into the plants beneath. But when mulch gets compressed (particularly if it’s very woody), the mulch surface becomes impermeable. To prevent this sort of compression from happening, it’s essential to rotate the mulch. Get an aerator and drag it along the ground to break up the mulch.
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