You’ll find ample natural mulch in the fall season. Shred autumn leaves with your lawn mower before bagging them with your grass clippings, then spread a thin layer at the base of your plants. If you have lots of wood scraps from trimming or removing a tree, make your own wood chips.May 12, 2020
Simply adding organic matter to the soil surface can suppress weeds, help retain soil moisture, insulate roots from extremes of hot and cold, feed plants, and improve soil structure. Best of all, mulch can be made – for free! – in your own garden.
Making your own wood chip mulch will be tough if you don’t have a chipper that you can utilize. The most practical way to go about doing it is going to be to try to cut the wood into tiny pieces by hand. This involves using tools such as axes, hammers, and loppers to get the wood chunks as small as you can.
Grass clippings can be used in garden beds and as a mulch for vegetable gardens. Like many other biodegradable mulch materials, grass clippings help your garden to retain moisture, block out weeds and add nutrient to the soil.
Put a layer of leaves approximately 4 inches deep on the bottom, cover with a 2-inch layer of grass clippings and top with scraps of vegetables, coffee grounds and egg shells from your kitchen. Do not add any meat or dairy products to the pile as they will rot and ruin the mulch. Continue layering in this manner.
When you put garden waste through a shredder, it composts far more quickly than it would if you just pile it on. You can also use shredded garden waste directly on your borders as a mulch, where it will help keep in moisture and suppress weeds. It will slowly break down and return nutrients to the soil.
Spread the shredded branches over the top of the bed. Apply the branches in a 2-inch-thick layer if the chips are smaller than 1 inch in diameter. Lay the mulch up to 4 inches deep if the shredded branch pieces are larger.
Grass clippings are a good mulch option with a few conditions: Do not apply more than 1 or 2 inches of grass clippings at one time. Use dry clippings. Wet grass clippings can mat down, reducing reduce oxygen and moisture from getting down into the soil.
The only way grass can grow from clippings is if there are seeds mixed in with the cut grass. Once removed from the grass blade, the clippings decompose and return their nutrients to the soil.
Grass clippings left on your lawn after mowing will decompose in 3–4 weeks on average. Within 1–2 weeks the grass clippings will often no longer be visible, because they will reach the soil level and begin to break down. Grass clippings added to compost will break down fully in 1–3 months.
Mowed grass clippings are a free and simple way to mulch your trees. Mulching trees will help keep the soil moist, which cuts down on the need to water. Grass clippings might also prevent weeds from sprouting around the base of your trees, which can improve the curb appeal of your home.
Most of the time, mulching your clippings is the best option. You should bag your clippings if the grass is tall, leaves are covering the lawn, or you need to prevent disease and weeds from spreading.
For your vegetable gardens, use compost in your soil and finely ground, fully composted mulch atop it. However, fresh wood chips are just fine for mulching around trees, shrubs, and perennials that have established root systems.
When garden waste is recycled it is transformed into nutrient-rich soil conditioner. This can then be used in a range of different applications, such as for agriculture, land reclamation and as an ingredient in some multipurpose composts you can buy at a garden centre.
Some local authorities provide a special bin for your garden waste and collect it as part of their household collection scheme. If you don’t have this type of collection service or your bin is full, you can recycle garden waste at your nearest Household Waste Recycling Centre.
While a few straggly and thin weeds just getting a start can be plucked from the area before mulching, established weeds need to be pulled and the area sprayed to ensure roots and spores don’t return and find a way through the barrier of mulch. Before mulching a new bed, pull all weeds from the area.
Compost is best at adding nutrients to the soil and improving soil structure. Mulch is best at limiting weed growth, preventing erosion and retaining soil moisture. Compost is made up of decomposed, organic materials; whereas, mulch can be inorganic or organic materials that, in most cases, have not yet decomposed.
Most wood chippers also shred leaves just fine. The wood chipper is typically more of a heavy-duty device, and you will pay for that extra quality. If you do not need to chip the wood, you generally can get by more inexpensively buying a leaf shredder.
Cedar Mulch
Cedar Mulch Cedar mulch is one of the best types of wood mulch. Cedar mulch has natural oils in the wood that repel insects, which makes it the ideal choice of wood mulch, particularly in areas where termites are prevalent.
Mulch can consist of many different types of materials, including wood chips, bark, grass clippings, manure, compost, leaves, straw, sawdust, hay, newspaper, cardboard, and wool. … For example, mulch helps to conserve moisture by holding more water close to plant roots.
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