How to Keep Your Garden Well Mulched (and Why You Should Do It)
People think of mulch as something that adds a unifying look to their beds, but that’s not why you need it. When done correctly, mulch provides an insulating layer that protects your plants from extreme weather conditions, keeps the soil from drying out, and provides nourishment to your beds as it decomposes. Laying down mulch is a big job, so it can be frustrating to view it as temporary. But the mulch breaks down – that’s how it should be. Many people complain about mulch blowing away, but luckily this is a solvable problem.
The correct way to mulch
The surface of your soil is vulnerable. It is exposed to the sun and can dry out easily. It is exposed to wind, which can blow it away if you don’t have plant roots to hold it up. We now constantly experience extreme weather conditions, including heat in the summer and extreme ice in the winter, all of which wreak havoc on your plants. A healthy layer of mulch of three to six inches can really make a difference.
You want to be sure that the organic material you choose comes off the stems of your plants. (Mulch should also not be adjacent to tree trunks.) You want your plants to be planted in soil, not mulch, and each plant has a natural place to which it should be buried in the soil as it comes from in the nursery or grows naturally and the mulch will smother the plants. Removing the mulch creates a well around the base of the plants, which is ideal for watering.
Thicker mulch will not blow away
Large stores usually sell colored mulch in bags. There are three problems with this mulch that make it a poor choice: the dye itself, which fades and adds chemicals to your garden beds; lack of nutrition in it; and finally, people don’t apply it enough and a light coat won’t do much. This dyed mulch may look great at first, but again, that’s not the purpose of the mulch, and the dye will still fade quickly. Sometimes people put plastic in front of mulch or landscape fabric, and that’s not recommended either. The plastic will break; It usually doesn’t suppress weeds as well as you think; and this leads to microplastics ending up in your beds. Getting rid of this plastic by taking it back is also an unpleasant process.
Instead, you want the natural material to sit on top of your soil, and you want a fair amount of it—ideally three to six inches deep. I like to use wood chips because they have weight, create a uniform appearance, break down slowly, and are great for composting the soil. They’re also free – I use ChipDrop to get them every year and have been using them for 10 years without any problems. You can also use straw ( not hay – there is an important difference) or leaves. In the fall, rake or blow leaves into garden beds instead of bagging them. Leaf mulch makes excellent compost while supporting native beneficial insects as nesting sites for the winter. Using more mulch and denser mulch means it is less likely to blow away. Even if you have some of these, you still have a significant portion of them.
You may just think that your mulch is blowing away.
If done correctly, the mulch will decompose in place, enriching the soil. Perhaps what looks like mulch disappearing is actually what is happening. It may also be that colored mulch loses its color. You can also wash away the mulch if you water the plants from above rather than watering the plants at the soil line with drip irrigation.
Even if your mulch migrates and your plant beds are now more open, this isn’t really a problem for the areas where the mulch migrates. It should just break there too. The bigger problem is that your beds are left exposed to the elements and you are losing out on benefits.
How to keep your bed tidy
Borders or edging around your beds will help the mulch stay in place and keep your beds looking uniform, whether you use plastic, metal or brick. If you have a well-planted garden, your landscaping should provide wind protection as you want a healthy mix of undergrowth, shrubs and tree canopy. If you experience enough wind to create a problem for your mulch, you may think that your landscaping has left your plants too exposed and add more of those layers. You can also consider using ground cover, which is undoubtedly the best way to reduce erosion as it forms roots that anchor the soil. I don’t want to mention mulch glue because I don’t think it’s necessary, but there’s usually nothing problematic about the glue itself. It is a mixture of bark dust and other wood products that is heated into a sticky adhesive that can be sprayed onto the mulch to hold it in place. However, I am afraid that this prevents the mulch from doing what we want it to do, which is break down into compost.
Mulch is not permanent
Mulch is a task that should be addressed annually. Choose the right type of mulch and make sure you apply enough in the right places and replace it when you notice it disappearing. Inspect the soil under the composting mulch from time to time. Most likely, it’s a healthy layer of humus, full of happy worms and mycorrhizae .