Follow these tips and avoid these pitfalls for a beautiful, healthy garden bed.
DO Use Organic Mulch
Organic mulch refers to mulch made up of recycled materials, such as wood chips or straw, often by-products of other industries. Because of this, organic mulch is a lot cheaper than its non-organic counterparts.
Organic mulches will break down over time, meaning you will occasionally have to buy more to top up your gardens. There are more pros here than cons, however, as the breakdown of the mulch not only helps prevent over mulching, but it will also give a healthy boost of nutrients to the soil below.
Despite this, you may prefer to search for mulch that takes longer to break down, as you don’t intend to spend extra time topping up every so often. There are some types of organic mulches that take longer than others to break down while still retaining all the benefits.
DO Use Bark Based Mulch
Bark based mulches will take longer to break down. Two of the best options of bark-based mulches are tea tree mulch and cypress pine mulch. Both will take a long time to break down and offer several unique benefits.
Tea tree mulch is full of nutrients and provides a pleasant aroma that’s said to act as a mosquito repellent. It’s full of nutrients that release as it breaks down, feeding plants and soil.
Cypress pine mulch doesn’t contain nearly so many nutrients, however, it does contain a chemical that inhibits weed growth. Additionally, while other mulches will often attract termites, cypress pine mulch instead wards them off.
Bark mulch is offered in larger or smaller pieces. These are better for the soil as they allow in more water and air. Keep in mind larger pieces are more likely to wash away if the garden bed is on a hill, making smaller pieces the better choice.
DON’T Use Rocks or Gravel
Rocks and gravel are an often-used form of inorganic mulch because they don’t need to be topped up often and can look quite nice. However, rocks are also notoriously bad for trapping debris.
Whereas organic mulch will allow the debris to break down with it, rocks will trap the debris, running the nice look you aimed to achieve. It will take time and effort to remove this debris by hand, a lot more than would have been spent applying organic mulch.
People are often tempted to simply pour more rocks on top to cover up the debris, but DO NOT DO THIS. Over mulching is a serious problem, especially when using rocks. If you over mulch you will be suffocating the soil beneath, which may kill the plants in that garden bed.
Over mulching can even be a problem for organic mulch so keep an eye on how much you are using.
DON’T
Put A Weed cloth Beneath The Mulch
Placing a weed cloth beneath the mulch is a common method of keeping weeds from growing up from underneath. However, you may be surprised to learn that weed cloths can often cause more harm than good.
Weeds will often grow on top of mulch rather than from beneath (read more about weeds and how to get rid of them here) so the weed cloth is less effective than most think.
More than that, it will suffocate the soil and prevent any plants from getting the water they need.
Ironically, it can also make it harder to remove weeds. After time weeds will find their way through holes and rips in the cloth. When this happens, it is much harder to pull them out as the roots can get caught beneath the cloth.
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