Mulching is one of the smartest and easiest things a gardener can do. Once you pull a thick blanket of mulch around your plants, very few weeds come through it. And those that do are small, spindly, and easy to pull out. Mulch also holds water in the ground, which makes it especially useful in areas with insufficient rainfall. In an unmulched garden, the sun evaporates the water and bakes the soil. In a mulched garden, the soil stays cool and moist, and earthworms hang out to increase their families.
There’s nothing mysterious or complicated about mulch. It’s alayer of almost anything that goes over a garden. Some people use newspapers, neatly folded and laid between the rows. Others use wood chips, grass clippings, leaves, or even black plastic. The plastic mulch has been touted and advertised as perfect, because it heats up the soil and it doesn’t need to be replaced yearly. But it’s expensive and it doesn’t decompose. It will never add nutrients to a garden like organic mulches will.
I use a combination of grass clippings and all the hay I can get my hands on. Every year, I turn the old mulch into the soil and start over again. It’s continually improving the garden. A few years ago, I visited Sarah Stout, one of the mothers of mulch gardening, at her home in Connecticut. She works a garden an acre in size. She maintains eight inches of hay mulch year round and no longer bothers to fertilize her already fertile plot.
She keeps building up that mulch, and when planting time comes, she pulls it aside and sows her seed. The crops she brings in are tremendous. But she’s earned her good soil – she’s been fertilizing and mulching that plot for several years. And I have never had a garden I thought wouldn’t be improved by compost or manure. So I add these, and then mulch later. It works out fine.
By late mulching, I give the ground a chance to warm up in springtime. When the tomatoes start to bloom, I start to lay down mulch. I pull it close around the plants, and try to do it after a good rain, so there’s moisture for it to keep in the ground. Once it’s down, I hardly ever water. I make it thick (between six and ten inches) and keep a close watch on rain.
If a week goes by without it, I’ll check the soil under the mulch. If it’s moist, I’ll wait and hope for a shower. If it’s very dry, I’ll water, but I think the plants prefer rain, and I like to give them what they like. Mulch has a lot of good points and one major disadvantage. It’s nice for walking barefoot on, and it keeps you from tracking dirt into the house. Cats love to lie on it, and they’ll keep mice and small rabbits away.
With mulch, you can get maximum use of a garden. You don’t need any rows wide enough to run a cultivator through, so you can plant closely. Unused areas are evident – they show up as expanses of mulch – and it’s easy to pull the mulch back and pop a few more plants in. It’s a boon for people who garden on weekends, or gardeners who take summer vacations. It will keep a garden weeded and moist no matter who’s around, so it can be left alone. And it won’t have gone out of control in a week or two.
The disadvantage is that slugs really like mulch. They’ll hide under it and come out at night to eat and leave their slimy trails. Head them off by putting oak leaves and wood ashes on top of your mulch. They don’t like to crawl over rough surfaces, so use horsehair, old crinolines, or anything you can think of to make your garden crisp and unpleasant for them. If they come around anyway, put out saucers of beer or yeast mixtures, and they’ll slither in and drown. A few shakes of salt will dissolve slugs, but it will be gory.
How to Compost Grass Clippings
http://www.onlinetips.org/grass-clippings-compost
