Why to Mulch and Best Natural Mulches

good morning everyone today I am going to share one of the very best things that I have ever done for my Ohio Garden this one simple thing allows me to avoid weeding the entire summer drastically Cuts back on the amount of watering that I have to do over time it helps to improve the quality of my clay soil and best of all for the most part it's entirely free so what is this one thing it's just Mulch and in today's video I'm going to share my favorite types of all-natural mulches the pros and cons of each and how I use them in my own garden so let's jump in foreign [Music] reasons that using mulch in the garden can be really beneficial and I've already hit on a couple of the big ones the first being weed suppression mulch can help suppress the growth of weeds by blocking sunlight from reaching the soil surface which inhibits weed seed germination now they're still aggressive weeds which will power through most mulches dandelions and thistles I'm looking at you but I found that they are typically much easier to pull out of soil which has been mulched versus left bare the second is moisture retention mulching prevents soil moisture evaporation thus reducing the amount of watering needed as you can imagine this is a particular importance during periods of hot and dry weather now the amount of watering needed with mulch will vary significantly based on your specific growing conditions so climate and rainfall soil type Etc here in Ohio my clay soil holds water very very well and this can be both a blessing and a curse it can be a curse in the spring when the rain just won't let up and it takes forever for that soil to drain and dry up enough to even plant but it's a blessing in the hot summer months particularly through July and August when sometimes we have no rain for weeks and the Clay's ability to hold on to moisture means that I have to water less now combine that with the use of mulch and there are times when I can get through the entire summer only having to water my in-ground beds three or four times often with my vegetables like corn which tends to be a little more drought resistant once it's established I can forego the watering completely with a heavy mulch of hay now another biggie is improved soil Health natural organic mulches such as grass clippings leaf mulch and wood chips break down over time adding nutrients and organic matter to the soil improving fertility and soil structure the microorganisms which help in the breakdown of these materials such as bacteria and fungi also contribute to a broader biodiversity of species in the soil which generally also contributes to overall soil Health in addition to those benefits mulch can also help regulate soil temperature so it will keep soil cooler in the hot summer months and warmer in the spring and the fall when the temperatures are cooler this regulated soil temperature helps with the growth and formation of most of your vegetables and fruiting plants it can also help with soil erosion in areas that receive very heavy rainfall or strong winds mulching can help prevent the spread of certain diseases in particular those that can be spread by infected soil Splash up the mulch prevents soil from splashing up onto the bottom leaves during periods of heavy rainfall or overhead irrigation thus preventing or slowing the spread of certain diseases it can also deter certain Garden pests so Critters that would normally crawl into the soil beneath a plant and lay their eggs sometimes are deterred by a heavy Mulch and it can provide a habitat for predatory insects and arachnids and other Critters in my garden in particular I see a lot of things like wolf spiders and predatory beetles hiding in that mulch waiting to Ambush their prey there are quite a few different types of natural mulches that will work well in the garden and what's best for you is going to depend a lot on your specific growing conditions and what's readily available in your area but I'm going to share some of my personal favorites some of my favorite mulches are totally free waste products being on a partially wooded lot we of course end up with a lot of leaves in the fall but if you don't have a lot of trees on your property you can usually find people just giving leaves away now my husband chops and collects the leaves with a mower bagger and just leaves them in this big pile at the back of the property for me to use as I need them I've also heard of folks just putting leaves in big garbage bags which speeds their decomposition now most of this pile has been sitting here since last fall some of it even from the fall before and if you come in close here I'll show you one of my favorite things about leaf mulch over time as this all starts to decompose you end up with this lovely substance known as leaf mold leaf mold is simply composted leaves when they break down they turn into this dark crumbly soil-like substance it's an absolutely beautiful addition to the garden and I usually end up with a nice mix of partially to fully broken down leaves by this point in the year in addition to providing nutrients which can act as natural fertilizer leaf mold contains tons of microorganisms primarily fungi that are beneficial for its breakdown and are very important for soil Health these microorganisms help to break down the organic matter making it more readily available to plants now leaf mulch is one of two of my preferred mulches to use in my actual garden beds around my plants if I'm transplanting I typically plant the whole area water well and then apply several inches of leaf mulch over the whole bed but I do avoid putting the leaf mulch right up next to the plant stems I usually go up to within a couple inches of the seedlings if I'm direct sewing I will typically either mulch the entire bed first and then clear a small path to plant in or I wait until the seedlings are up several inches and then mulch now I highly recommend chopping your leaves if possible before using them as mulch in your garden the first year I had a garden at our current home I made the mistake of dumping a ton of whole unchopped leaves onto my garden beds in the fall whole leaves seem to blow away a lot more easily than the chopped leaves do and while the whole leads did do an excellent job of suppressing weeds they also formed a wet thick impenetrable mask that prevented any oxygen from reaching my soil and didn't let any moisture Escape they also took forever to break down it was two to three years before my garden really was back to normal I eventually ended up tilling most of them in but the breakdown of those leaves does tie up nitrogen and my soil actually tested as nitrogen deficient for several years until that breakdown process had fully completed chopped leaves tend to break down much more quickly so the nitrogen in a mobilization tends to be much less of an issue I do like to use some of my leaf mulch in the fall as well I don't like to leave any soil exposed so if there are beds where I have not gotten a cover crop planted I will cover those with several inches of leaf mulch in the fall over the course of the fall winter and spring a lot of those break down and any residue that's left I simply scoot out of the way when I'm ready to plant now here on our property we have primarily hickory trees with some Walnut Oak and maple now I know there are a lot of concerns with using Walnut in the garden due to potential jaglone toxicity but I will say that I have never had an issue using a relatively small proportion of Walnut leaves mixed in with all of those other species another favorite freebie of mine is grass clippings and this is the other mulch that I prefer to use in my garden beds bonus if you can use leaf mulch and grass clippings together I use them the same way I do grass clippings so I either apply in a layer around my transplants taking care not to have them pushed right up against the plants or I will mulch my seedling beds with them either clearing a little path when I plant or waiting to mulch until after my seedlings are up a few inches grass clippings are great because they can contain up to four percent nitrogen by weight making them a natural source of fertilizer for my garden plants when using grass clippings as a mulch that nitrogen breaks down slowly and provides a slow release into the soil like my leaf mulch we collect the grass clippings as we mow and store them in large piles near the garden for me to use and I do use both fresh grass clippings and dried grass clippings as mulch in the garden now we typically try to mow before any weeds in the lawn go to seed but that doesn't always happen but I have found that even with some weed seeds in with the grass clippings The Mulch does more to suppress weeds than it does to contribute any additional weed growth to my garden now I am not an advocate of large manicured Lawns my general rule is more Gardens and less grass but I do joke that we keep a decent proportion of our property in lawn because I need to harvest the grass for garden mulch now the next few mulches I'm going to mention I prefer to use as mulch in my garden path and areas surrounding Gardens rather than up in my actual beds and the first of those is wood chips now I love wood chips for the garden I typically use them in my garden walkways and over the course of a year or two they slowly break down and once they are decomposed I rake all of that lovely broken down material up into my beds but notice that I am waiting until they have broken down one of the more more common mistakes that I see in gardening is people applying a very thick layer of wood mulch on their seedling beds this can cause issues because in addition to wood mulch being a difficult thing for tender young seedlings to push up through the decomposition process of wood chips can actually cause the release of volatile chemicals which can inhibit seed germination wood chips which are rich in carbon also tend to utilize soil nitrogen as they break down in a process called nitrogen immobilization this process can temporarily Rob your plants of the nitrogen that they need to grow now this tends to be a much larger issue when large quantities of wood chips are tilled into the soil versus being left on top to use as mulch and I find that perennial planting so my things like fruit trees and shrubs even strawberries tend to do fine with wood chip mulch but I do also always provide these plants with a dose of supplemental fertilizer and I don't mulch right up to the base of the plant and for the love of God people no mulch volcanoes I think most of us have heard this information but if you are mulching around larger things like your fruit trees or your shrubs do not pile wood chip mulch up around the base of your plants that's detrimental for your plant's health I tend to stay a couple inches away and I make what is nicknamed a mulch donut where it gets a little bit thicker as you move out away from the plant to really hold moisture in around that root area but nitrogen immobilization can be detrimental to tender young seedlings especially those that have not formed a robust root system yet if you want to use wood chips as a mulch in your annual vegetable garden beds raymule wood chips are probably your best bet now Ray meal wood chips are going to typically be a mix of small branch inches twigs and leafy matter and tend to have a better Carbon to nitrogen ratio than older larger pieces of wood that have been shipped you can also offset any potential nitrogen tie up by mixing in an all-natural nitrogen Source at the time of planting so think something like blood meal or composted animal manure those are good sources of nitrogen and use a finished layer of mulch two to three inches at the most don't go any thicker than that now this next one unfortunately is not a freebie for me though it could be for you if you're really good friends with a farmer alfalfa hay is something I love to use in my garden walkways now it's not quite as pretty or easy to walk on as the wood chips are but you can't beat it for weed suppression moisture retention and the quick addition of organic matter my preferred method is to break flakes off the Bales four to six inches thick and apply these down my garden rose over the course of a year or two most of that hay will break down and I can then rake or hoe all of that decomposed organic matter up onto my beds also like my grass clippings alfalfa hay tends to contain three to four percent nitrogen by weight so again this can act as a natural fertilizer for my plants but keep in mind depending on the grower and the type of hay being produced hay can sometimes be treated with herbicides and you have to be careful in particular with the persistent herbicides because it can remain active in the hay and actually leach into the soil when used as a mulch and can damage or even kill young plants also somewhat ironically I've heard from folks that tend to avoid hay and lieu of straw because of the perceived weed content of a lot of hay my experience has actually been the opposite I tend to avoid straw as a garden mulch because I've had issues with it containing more weed seeds than my hay typically does now like I said I do opt for alfalfa hay and I opt for later cuttings which tend to can contain fewer weed seeds in general but either way you go hay or straw just try to get something with very little viable weed seed in it now with straw in general I find that it does not do as good a job suppressing weeds or retaining moisture and it doesn't break down as quickly which could actually be a pro depending on your specific goals the one exception to that is that I do prefer a straw mulch around my garlic in the fall this is because straw does tend to be much easier for that green garlic growth to push up through in the spring whereas hay tends to become much more compacted and matted together now a word on cardboard another mulch of sorts that I use in my garden walkways at times is cardboard typically in my garden paths I will lay a layer of cardboard down first and then cover it with the wood chips or the alfalfa hay while not what I would consider an all-natural mulch it is a bun and effective but I typically do get questions and concerns about the safety of using cardboard in edible garden areas I only use plain unwaxed boxes and remove all labels and tape before putting them down now atra the sustainable agriculture program did some research on the safety of using cardboard in gardens and looked into the different substances which go into making cardboard as well as the glues inks and Coatings that may be used what they found was that the basic components of corrugated cardboard seem to be relatively benign Brown corrugated cardboard appears to be the least processed paper product therefore it would have the lowest number and smallest quantity of chemical substances the opinion that I have formed on the matter is that it's a heck of a lot less terrible option than spraying the heck out of your garden to get rid of weeds or becoming so frustrated and overwhelmed with weeding in the middle of the sea season that you just give up it's kind of a lesser of the evils type scenario for me and my final preferred natural mulch is the use of cover crops I utilize all different types of cover crops to achieve different goals in my garden but there are certain types that make for excellent mulch when mulching and weed suppression is my goal I tend to opt for those cover crops which are going to give me the most biomass or Green Top growth this will include things like the winter Rye that you see behind me hairy vetch sorghum sedan grass and oats I will typically just chop and drop these cover crops so cutting them down at the appropriate time and just letting them lie on the soil surface as a mulch and I will simply move that residue out of the way slightly when it is time to put in my transplants or seeds so all of that residue as you can imagine will help to prevent weeds from popping up it also helps to retain soil moisture and the the cover crops like the other mulches I've mentioned over time will decompose and help to add valuable organic matter to my soil certain other cover crops in particular some types of clover are good used as a living mulch so white clover is often a good choice because it will create a dense short mat so thick that it's difficult for any type of weeds to pop up through and this can be a good choice for something like in between perennial asparagus Rose I know a lot of Apple Growers that use clover in between their Orchard rows any place that you might otherwise end up with grass but want something with the benefits that Clover can provide Clover has the added benefit of being a legume and thus a nitrogen fixer now while the use of mulch has been game changing for me there may be a few scenarios where using mulch might not be desirable the first is in the case of certain Garden pests in particular the dry added slug unfortunately mulch can provide an ideal habit for these little pests because it creates a cool damp moist environment which they love I do deal with slugs in my own garden but find that the benefits of the mulch outweigh the damage from the Slugs and if slugs are a big problem for you you may find that using certain mulches and avoiding others can help slugs don't tend to like wood chip mulch as much as they do things like hay and grass clippings the second scenario is when you may be dealing with a very cold wet soil so back in the beginning of the video I mentioned how when we get a lot of rain in the spring that soil really holds onto water and it doesn't want to dry out in this case I will often either hold off on adding any Mulch and Scoot the existing Mulch off of my garden beds until they've had a chance to dry out a little when we get a little later in the season I simply move that that mulch back up onto my beds keep in mind with mulch that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing applying a layer of mulch which is too thick in particular up around your plants in your garden beds can be detrimental to plant Health it can smother plant roots and prevent oxygen and water from entering the soil so the general recommendation that I see is no thicker than about two to three inches deep in the garden bed now you can go deeper than that in your garden pass of course without those issues occurring timing is important too you definitely don't want to mulch areas that have just been direct sewn until your seedlings are up an inch or two covering those seeds with a thick layer of mulch is going to prevent germination and even if those seeds do germinate tender young seedlings are often going to struggle to push their way up through a thick Mulch and finally if you're unsure about the source or the quality of your mulch it's probably best avoided things like wood chips from treated wood hay that's been sprayed with herbicide or grass clippings from treated Lawns are things you just want to avoid as mulch in your garden these can actually cause more problems in the long run than what they solve in the short term if you're not using your own materials don't be afraid to ask questions so I'm going to get back to mulching But be sure to drop a line in the comments below and let me know what your favorite mulch to use in the garden is and if you found today's video helpful please consider subscribing to my Channel growfully with Jenna thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Growfully with Jenna

Views: 317,679

Keywords: why to mulch, mulching your garden, why mulch, straw mulch, how to mulch, wood chips, organic gardening, types of mulch, best mulch, grass clippings, vegetable garden, growfully, growfully with jenna, best mulches, best natural mulches, why to mulch the garden, vegetable garden mulch, garden mulch, mulch best practices, mulch best practices, pros and cons of mulch, why use mulch, mulch garden, pros of mulch, cons of mulch, mulch mistakes to avoid, hay mulch, leaf mulch

Id: CZTUMV5YeBA

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023