How to Use Every Mulch: The Ultimate Growers' Guide

[Music] hey nerds farmer Jesse here today we are going to discuss each of the most popular and accessible mulches and how to use them on your farm or in your Gardens uh mulches can be amazing for soil that's true but not every mulch is great for every situation but you wouldn't want to mulch your kitchen with wood chips for instance you do like edit all these digressions out right and some mulches can even be detrimental to Gardens if used poorly so let's do it also stay tuned to the end of the video and I'll give you a glimpse into next week's video there's your hint first things first if you're not subscribed to this channel make sure to hit the Subscribe button and if you are subscribed you're fantastic really awesome and if you appreciate these videos you can always support our work by picking up a copy of the living soil handbook or a hat like so or other merch no till growers.com or become a patron at patreon.com no-till Growers or you can always just hit the super thanks button if this video is helpful that'd be super thanks alright so I've already done this video here on the history and the benefits of mulches but let's just do a quick recap uh mulches when applied properly can reduce erosion retain soil moisture suppress weeds uh feed the soil protect it from wind rain and the drying effects of sunlight and sleeping dogs and impromptu soccer matches I feel like I could make quite a list here mulches can even cool the soil or heat it up depending on how what the mulch is and how it's used and Growers have known about mulches for thousands of years this is not new information but mulches can also have negative effects on the soil as well when used improperly holding on to too much moisture at the wrong times of the year cooling the soil too much especially early in the spring mulches can add weed seed or dramatically alter the pH of your soil so as I go through each of these mulches I will give not just how to use them individually but also how not to use them but because we don't love to waste anyone's time on this channel here on the screen I don't know where else I would put it I guess it has to go on the screen I've put a list of where each mulch discussion starts in the video in case you're not interested in or don't have access to one mulch or another you can just skip right ahead to the one you want to know about all right let's dive in metaphorically because some of these are itchy starting with hay now hay is grass that is cut while it's at its peak ripeness preferably then dried to under 20 moisture give or take and then it's baled into either large round bales like these or smaller square bales that are often a little more expensive by comparison but much easier to move around for one person two strong people can technically roll out a properly placed round bale but it is a job I also find that round bales are often packed a little too tightly to make a good mulch just as a layer basically you have to roll it out and then get out there with a few rakes or something and spread it out a tractor will have to be used to place the round bales where you need them and maybe even start rolling them I don't own such a tractor and here's a video about the tractor that I do own so we go with square bales for quality of square bales I account for 627 square bales per 200 square feet or 18.5 square meters that typically gives me a few extra but having an extra Bale or 10 around is not the worst thing square bales run around four to six dollars a piece at the moment early in 2023 give or take the square bales that we get Average around 60 pounds a piece but you can get them smaller or larger all right so the pros of hay hay is really nutritious for the garden if it sustains an animal over the winter for instance it will help sustain your garden beautifully it's relatively easy to spread depending on what size Bale you purchase of course and you know use gloves hey cools and protects the soil nicely and retains moisture on the con side hay can bring a lot of weed seed with it some of which may be very undesirable like Johnson grass you may be able to find hay that is harvested before seed set or harvest your own hay of course but weed seeds are a huge issue with just hay that's on the market also in some situations hay producers May spray their hay Fields with broadleaf herbicide to kill well broadly pasture plants it's not clear how common that is and I've never ran into sprayed hay locally so just make sure you ask the purveyor I know my hey guy Russ personally and I trust him it's invaluable having that connection to my hay hey does cool the soil or keep it cool for longer so if you are in a cooler climate and need early production consider waiting until the summer to use something like hay you can also help counteract the cooling effect with tarps or clear plastic placed over top before planting so you basically place the plastic over top let it warm up the hay and the soil underneath it and then pull that and then plant just so the soil is a little warmer if you're in a warmer climate Tomatoes will suffer in hay in the early months because it's cooler but absolutely love the cooler soil in the summer from the hay mulch if you're in a very wet area with dense soils hay can keep things wetter for longer just know that especially before you've really improved that soil I like to run our chickens through Hade areas hate is a word yeah it was in that Taylor Swift song haters gonna hate hate hate some culture man so we run the chickens over previously Hade areas to clear out some of the weed seed hay can be a great resource but but be a bit complicated in intensive Garden so make sure to have a solid plan for how to employ it and deal with the wheat seeds next up straw straw is the dry stock off of a grain crop like rye wheat rice Etc typically a grain crop is harvested using a combine of some sort then the remaining stocks are cut and bailed similar to hay in large round bales or small square bales a estimated at least five to six Bales per bed in our area where grain production is very uncommon Bales run between eight dollars and twelve dollars per square bale give or take but in the Western United States at least you should be able to find them cheaper than that so it may be more of a resource for you than it is for me because remember with all of these things context is critically important all right so let's go through the pros of straw straw is very light and easy to spread it can retain moisture very well be excellent food for soil fungi and suppress weeds cons straw is not nearly as nutritious as hay or some of the other mulches and it will break down rather quickly against the soil although somewhat uncommon herbicides are sometimes sprayed on maturing grains to desiccate them meaning to essentially speed up the drying process so that herbicide residue May Linger on the straw and harm your garden plants best to consult with a straw purveyor to ensure the straw was not contaminated I recently saw at a conference where somebody was taking straw that they weren't sure about they were soaking it in buckets and then they were watering plants with it to see if it had any negative effects I don't know I don't know if that works or not because some of these things are not water soluble but it's a good idea that could at least give you some indication of whether or not it retains the herbicide interesting so anyway check with the purveyor and maybe they can tell you if it was contaminated and of course if not all the grain is harvested that grain can become a weed in your garden note that neither hay nor straw are required to be certified organic for use on Organic Farms though technically you are supposed to demonstrate in writing of some form that the purveyor has not directly sprayed the material so they have to sign that so straw can be an excellent mulch but just like hay it must be used strategically as it will cool the soil and keep it cool and keep it wet in cooler wetter climates use this material perhaps later in the season or consider warming it up with a tarp over top in warmer climates it may be a good idea to use it as the summer comes on to cool the soil both hay and straw are great for longer season crops but not as great for directly seeded crops because they're are not yet many options for drilling seeds on a small scale into thick grassy mulches all right let's talk about one of my favorite types of mulch cover crops now we've done several videos on cover crops at this point and I will almost certainly do more what can I say I love me some crops that I don't have to harvest so you can watch that expanding playlist here for everything from choosing the right cover crop to planting and terminating all the things on the pro side cover crops are incredible soil enhancers they increase the micro wheel biomass and microbial diversity in a soil as well as the available nutrients and tilth I.E texture this here is from a cover crop of peas in the fall that died over the winter and the soil feels like I worked in a bunch of compost it looks so good I want to eat it but like in vegetable form that said on the con side the mulching effect from cover crops is quite variable depending on the cover crop your soil preparation your region the health of the crop a pea cover crop like this one for instance will not have nearly the mulching effect of a winter rye and veg cover crop that survives the winter and gets tall in the spring cover crops can also occupy space well into the spring so that early plantings are not great for over wintered cover crops are really not even possible but can be fine with with winter killed cover crops obviously like those peas though again the mulch effect is significantly less this is the part that really needs to be heard I think I get a dozen or so messages in March and April every year from people freaking out about how their cover crop is still so short they really need to get some plants in the ground I really recommend if you want to use cover crops as a Mulcher otherwise that you take cover cropping very seriously because yes they are great soil enhancers but with poor planting you're really just planting a weed and for most of us cover crops will not be ready for no-till termination at least until usually May here in Kentucky Zone 6B or June much further north so you have to plan your garden around that it is early April here as I record this and this is what our overwintered cover crop looks like right now so yeah a weed otherwise the only way to kill something like this super young cover crop that you see in the Cold Spring is some sort of mechanical tillage we've been experimenting with lots of different things foreign [Music] you still have to at least like work those roots a little bit or the Rye will just come back but that mechanical tillage will eliminate the mulching factor and the no-till options and it is impossible to do if the soil is wet so it's not great just take that into consideration really think about how you want to use cover crops now let's do compost mulch because compost mulching is really popular and for good reason it can be very effective it's sometimes referred to as deep compost mulching or no dig and it's basically what it sounds like using a thick layer of compost to mulch the soil now if you take one thing away from this section of the video is that not all composts are created equal some compost are really well made really well balanced and amazing for soil health and some compost are well the opposite some of the ways compost can have issues and unfortunately these issues are not mutually exclusive so it could be one issue or some of these issues or all these issues or more issues than I can name some issues would be like compost can be immature meaning they have not fully stabilized which can cause nutritional or disease problems or burn your plant roots with excess nitrogen composts are exceedingly mulchy meaning that they are very chunky and can be what we call hydrophobic and dry out easily compost can also contain herbicide residue especially from persistent herbicides now there's a relatively new issue that needs to be addressed as well from pfas and pfoas that can contaminate compost usually and some would ironically from things like compostable containers but also biosolids which you notably cannot use if you are certified organic you can't use compost with pile solids but other compost may have it watch this video here for a deeper dive into some of the concerns that exist with composts and how to avoid them in this particular video however we are going to pretend that you vetted the compost and that it's good to go so congrats on the pro side compost can warm the soil slightly while also feeding it and inoculating it with good microbes in that way it's hard to find a better mulch than compost albeit heavy compost is relatively easy to spread it's like a rake and then so crops into or transplant directly into on the con side because everything has a con side compost can erode just like soil can erode in heavy rains and some to some extent in heavy winds compost can also throw the pH of a soil or nutritional profiles off in some cases at least temporarily it can get very warm in the sun in the summertime which can be hard on tender crops like lettuces deep layers of compost can be difficult to irrigate as compost itself doesn't always hold water very well depending on how mature or mulchy it is the expense is not a joke not even a dad joke especially now since 2020 the compost has that we were buying has gone up something like 500 per 40 yard load which makes it not super valuable people and for us honestly especially considering the compost we were using wasn't all that impressive to begin with it was just a nice mulching compost that we would supplement with good composts as I describe in the living soil handbook where I dive deep into mulches and composting so if you want more info it's there we've had to do be super creative with our mulching and composting these last few years to sort of skirt that issue which comes with its own challenges but compost has always been a more expensive mulch for us so for instance what may cost us thirty dollars to mulch a bed with hay would cost us upwards of 70 or 80 dollars for a bed of compost or more and we have a lot of beds on this Farm like 139 of them so it's a lot of coverage if you can make your own compost in bulk so you know and trust the ingredients that's obviously ideal for those of us who have to buy it though because we lack the Machinery or material we have to proceed carefully estimate about one yard of compost per 200 square feet of bed space that's what we do that will give you a few nice inches of mulch or you can use this formula bed width times bed length times depth of compost desired and then divide that by 46 656 that's the number of cubic inches in a cubic yard that will give you the compost needed per bed in cubic yards you can just screenshot that it's way easier than saying it all right let's move on now uh there are a few complementary mulches I'd like to touch on what I mean by complementary is that they are generally better alongside or underneath of other mulches this would include leaves cardboard and paper mulches and possibly wood chips the reason I list these is complementary and not primary mulches is that they all blow away or blow around relatively easily leaves for instance can be an amazing soil enhancer but if you just put leaves on the soil surface they will almost certainly just blow away or at least partially Blow Away we've learned to be very careful with Leaf mulching because shredded leaves are really really great for soil like I said but they are hard to get out of like lettuce mix if they blow onto a lettuce bed and we do a lot of lettuce leaves can also sometimes create a thick mat that won't allow much water or air through we put a thick layer of leaves over garlic one year and then lightly mulched with hay over top of that but the garlic had a really really hard time getting penetrating the leaf layer so we didn't do that again if you're planting into them into Leaf mats that's great that mat is going to be welcomed if you're hoping something will pop through them maybe not so much so what I recommend is laying leaves down on a non-windy day and then mow over top of them just mow up the leaves and then add a thin layer of a heavier mulch over top preferably something like compost but anything will do and that'll help sort of have those leaves break down a little bit that bed will need some time to break down in general before planting it but you will see less matting and you will also just get a lot more benefits out of the leaves and they'll stay put for the cardboard often called corrugated cardboard or corrugated fiber board I'm saying that for the people that work in that industry because they always get mad when I just call it cardboard but because we're not in the industry we're going to call it cardboard sorry so for cardboard and paper mulches avoid as much ink as you can especially colored inks an Organic certification we are permitted technically to use cardboard as long as it does not have inks that are anything other than black also avoid any and all waxes that's both organic standard and just good practice because waxes don't break down very quickly may contain additional chemicals that you want to avoid if you want to avoid cardboard altogether too because of the chemicals and the glues and such I don't blame you we don't use as much of that stuff as we once did but we do find cardboard handy around shrubs sometimes in various you know areas of the garden around like tunnels and such both cardboard and mulch papers can also make a nice weed block but like leaves they will likewise Blow Away quite easily if not weighted down so put these things down first and then cover with an additional mulch like a little bit of compost that's what we do just kind of as we go some complimentary mulch that does not blow away that easily is grass clippings that is this is essentially straw you lazily make yourself by mowing your lawn and then either transporting from the bag or shooting the mulch directly onto the beds as you mow if you can do that if it's not like lettuce or something grass clippings can go on top of other mulches or underneath though it is harder to have enough grass clippings to mulch an entire bed for smaller Gardens that may be possible there's no reason you can't grass clippings are highly nutritious they may be the most nutritious of all of these these fresh grass clippings way more than hay because they're not dried so anyway they're highly nutritious though they may contain some weed seeds depending on where what stage the grass is in I personally like using grass clippings on our compost like inside of our compost but if I had enough grass clippings and I knew there were no chemicals applied to them I would happily use them as a big part of our mulching system so it's just a great resource I just did a whole video on wood chips recently here so I'm not going to dive too deeply into those or bark mulches in this video but those are also in the realm of complementary complementary complimentary mulches if you were wanting to use wood chips or bark mulches on bed surfaces either wait until they are incredibly broken down or add a thick layer of compost underneath of them to avoid nitrogen tie up as they decompose they will tie up nitrogen it's just how it works obviously wood chips can offer a lot of nutritional benefits as they decompose but when raw they can alter the soil PH and slow growth of plants so just watch that a form mentioned video and proceed carefully so I made this entire video and almost completely forgot about living mulches I blame that on you I also blame American cheese on you well life's not fair so this is an Ever developing subject in the world of small-scale Agriculture but what a living mulch is if it's not obvious is a mulch that is alive a cover crop a perennial cover crop a bunch of weeds something that is not the main crop but is in fact growing in the same relative space why would anyone do such a thing well for largely the same reasons you would grow a cover crop to help build soil to protect it from erosion to increase biodiversity while feeding and enriching that area with nutrients in essence to the soil the more photosynthesis the better some crops that are often used for perennial cover cropping are things like red and white clovers or micro clovers plus smaller herbs maybe something like creeping thyme or chamomile I've seen small lists here or there of what people might use or have tried and I think that's ever evolving based on your climate and your region for us we trialed a few different versions of perennial cover cropping over the years and although we did not see much success there honestly those trials are ultimately where our living Pathways came from uh we just found the reduced Vigor among crops when they had other plants to compete with that were so close to them was not worth the use of space and it limited our crop selection too much we could grow taller crops but not things like squashes or lettuces that we rely on for our business but we liked the soil retention and the soil under the living cover was really beautiful so we kind of just moved the living mulch out a couple feet to the pathways where they are still contributing just like at a distance so they're not competing as much with our crops for nutrients or space or water in drier times I've done several videos on our living Pathways and I don't necessarily recommend it for everyone so I would watch some some of those videos start here if you're curious there will be more soon too so subscribe if you have not already and be on the lookout for those another way we like living mulches is just over sowing or under sewing our cover crops into our fall crops so you could over sow crimson clover into fall brassicas for instance or in the case of my buddy Evan chinder at The Culinary Gardener into Radicchio or you could underswew peas into broccoli and cabbage with a cedar before they take over the bed and you can't fit the cedar in there crimson clover is really nice for this because it's small and it germinates kind of right on the surface or it works itself in enough to germinate really easily and it does survive the winter at least here in zone 6B other species may be harder to establish if you want to play with this idea of living mulches just start small trial a couple beds or partial beds or if you have any good experiences with it already let us know I'm not entirely ruling out the idea of growing crops in a perennial cover crop but my personal opinion is that we would have to breed much more competitive cash crops and really dial in the options of what works and what doesn't so it gets complicated and if your cash crop loses most or all of the yield you've basically just grown a wild looking yard I call them yardins last thing flowers we really love flowers in and around our crops where possible this year we've moved our sweet alyssum planting from the Tomato beds to the Cucumber bed because we kind of want the flowers to help with pollinators but then we want the alyssum to kind of be gone before they drop a bunch of weed seed or bring in a bunch of harlequin beetles cucumbers being a crop that produces for about eight weeks instead of all dang summer just makes more sense for us with that crop we'll update you on that in other interplanted flowers soon alright back to younger me for sake of balance I should talk about plastic mulches and Landscape Fabrics briefly we do not really use either of those on our farm anymore actually we never or use the typical plastic mulches and I don't have a lot of experience with them and I'm not going to talk too much about them but we have in the past used landscape fabric and I am generally okay with it one because they're reusable too because they allow the soil to breathe and absorb water while killing and blocking weeds three they don't just warm the soil but also moderate the temperature fairly well even in the summertime and four we can use Plastics like that in organic farming if they are removed at the end of the season and they are petroleum-based but not polyvinyl chloride based like PVC like for instance Billboards biodegradable plastics for their part are not at least last I checked allowed in Organic certification in practice the challenge with these Plastics is really just keeping them pinned down to the ground and in the place that you put them some people had Heap soil onto them which is effective but messy to clean up and Plastics are a big source of soil erosion when hauled to the dump because soil sticks to them we always pin the landscape fabric down with eight inch lawn Staples at about five to seven feet apart on both sides which is effective but time consuming user Steph spice hauler on our no-till Growers Forum recently posted these fixing gaskets which are cool that could be super helpful we'll link The Forum in the show notes so you can go check that out and ask any questions you have take that part pretty seriously you do not want Plastics blowing around after you have planted something I think especially on new Farms landscape fabric can be nice for getting the weed Banks under control and for managing weeds in general while you get your systems down I prefer other mulches but I think there is a place for things like landscape fabric begrudgingly and if you need a second light for it just use it for the sides of your tunnels and your walkways or wherever so that was kind of a mix of pros and cons there all together but you get the idea oh one last con though is the microplastics thing that's the biggest reason we stopped using our landscape fabric those tiny shards little shreds of black plastic Plastics don't easily decompose they just break down into smaller and smaller shards until they are embedded in our soil life and in our food and in our guts it is unclear the long-term effects of micro nanoplastics on soil and human health but all signs point to all right so there are more obscure mulches available like March hay and rocks or nerds yeah of course I was talking about the candy but I'll let you flesh out the more off the beaten path options in the comments section let me know what questions you have or comments you have uh like this video If you like this video subscribe to this channel if you watched this far because why not you're already awesome may as well just confirm it the next logical step pick up a copy of the living soil handbook or a hat or other merch at notailroads.com become a monthly supporter of this work at patreon.com no-till Growers or just give a super thanks by clicking that super thanks button super thanks for that super thanks for watching we'll see you later bye [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: No-Till Growers

Views: 379,232

Keywords: no dig, no till, gardening, garden mulch, mulching, leaves, wood chips, paper mulch, living mulches, no excavar, no labrar, jardinería, mantillo de jardín, mantillo, hojas, astillas de madera, mantillo de papel, mantillos vivos, sem cavar, sem lavrar, jardinagem, mulch de jardim, mulch, folhas, lascas de madeira, mulch de papel, mulch vivo, DubbedWithAloud

Id: SoF7Z6sWiEY

Length: 26min 59sec (1619 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023