Mulching, can it improve the health of your plants?

Do you want to see your plants thrive? Well, read on. Mulching has traditionally been used prior to winter to supress weeds in the garden, saving your hamstrings and lower back from killing you the days after a weed pulling session. Weed’s might generally work their way through the mulch you’ve laid; however, mulching makes the weed pulling process easier and there are less weeds overall to pull.

In summer, mulching helps your plants retain moisture which will greatly reduce your water bill. Mulching seems straightforward, right? Wrong! Mulching is a mind field. The market is saturated with mulches. How do you know which mulch to choose? Let’s get one thing straight, expensive doesn’t mean better! Marketing executives have some clever tricks they use to lure you into thinking you are doing the best thing for your garden knowing their product isn’t top notch. Let’s get things straight.

We need to get back to plant health basics and talk about Porosity and Carbon. The scientific word for the movement of water is called ‘Osmosis’, meaning water moves from areas of high water potential to low water potential. In gardening terms this means, water will move from watered soil to other areas around it less wet. Now, let’s apply this to mulch. Pine bark chips are a common mulching medium, mainly because they are aesthetically pleasing. They make your garden look uniform and beautiful. What most gardeners don’t know is water will move from your soil (high water potential) into your pine bark mulch (low water potential) because pine bark mulch is Porous. Pine bark mulch takes water away from your plants by filling up its porous spaces and in turn destroying the health of your soil. 

So, what is the best mulch to choose? You should be using a mulch that will break down over time as this will add health to your soil in the form of Carbon. Carbon, also known as Carbon Glue, when found in soils, will improve plant growth through increased water retention, enhanced nutrient availability and increased resistance to erosion. You will need to re-mulch over time however, re-mulching is a cheaper exercise than replacing the plants you’ve lost from a hot summer where all you’ve done is feed your pine bark mulch water.

We recommend and carry Sugar Cane Mulch and WhoFlungDung. Our staff and ourselves also use straw hay; wood shavings mixed with manure and sugar cane mulch mixed with compost. We mulch the shop grounds with wood shavings mixed with resident rabbit ‘Beans’ manure. This is the perfect mixture of carbon adding mulch with the benefits of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilisation. Rabbit manure has little to no odour making it perfect to use on our shop gardens and it’s a cold manure meaning it won’t burn plants and/or roots like cow manure will.

Leaf litter as seen above can also substitute as excellent organic mulch

Winter weeds suck, but so do Winter frosts. Have you lost plants to frost? It’s as bad as losing plants to extreme heat. When mulch is applied in Autumn, it can keep the soil temperature more stable, preventing premature freezing and thawing which can damage plant roots during Winter. Mulching helps maintain a consistent environment in the root zone, reducing stress on plant roots. By mulching to prevent weed growth, this eliminates competition for water and nutrients, ensuring that the plants you want to support receive the resources they need to thrive, even during droughts.

It’s important to apply mulch correctly. The mulch layer should be spread evenly around the base of plants in a sloping mound. Space must be left around the stem or trunk to prevent moisture buildup and root rot. You should check your mulched areas in Spring and Autumn as a part of your gardening routine and replenish thinned areas where needed. Now is mulching time, so pop in store and grab yourself a bag or bags of organic mulch.