Mulch - What It Is & Why You Need It.

Mulch saves the lives of transplanted trees and so can save you from the pain of planting them all over again! 

You can buy weed suppressing mulch fabric from us, either as long strips of woven polypropylene for hedges or single biodegradable mats for trees.
 

What is Mulch?

Mulch is almost anything that you use to cover the soil around a plant in order to:

1. Keep the sun off the soil.
2. Trap moisture in the soil while allowing water in.
3. Make it harder for weeds to grow.
4. Improve soil fertility (more on this point below)

If it is going to be hard to frequently water and weed your new plants after planting, then it is essential that you use mulch (if you want your plants to live!).
Please note that establishing plants must still be watered, but a good mulch will allow you to do it less often.

Homemade mulch can be made of pretty much any garden waste, including fresh grass clippings, autumn leaves, chipped or shredded wood, and if you don't mind the look, plain cardboard (not glossy) or newspaper, and old clothes, rugs or sheets, preferably made from natural fibre.

What is the best mulch?

The best mulches for flower beds and vegetable gardens, which will immediately release nutrients for hungry plants, are well rotted compost, manure, or leaf mould.
Cow, sheep, or goat manure are generally fine to use fresh, but horse manure should be aged for a year before it can be used on shallow rooted or newly transplanted plants: fresh horse manure is too high in nitrogen for sensitive roots.

The "other best" mulch for many garden uses, especially around trees and shrubs, is bark chips, which look nice and last for a relatively long time.
They break down slowly and so release their nutrients slowly, but over time they become part of the soil and encourage rich fungal life even on poor soil.

But bark chips are rarely free; wood chips, meaning the whole tree shredded up, leaves to heartwood, often are free because arborists want to dump them. They are also great for ornamental use, fruit trees, and just spreading around nooks and crannies to suppress weeds.

However, every mulch, even inorganic plastic mulch fabric, will do a lot to improve soil fertility simply by trapping moisture: moisture encourages soil life, which is what makes soil humus and drives fertility. 

But I was told that non-rotted mulch would rob nutrients from the soil?

Fresh grass clippings, fresh woodchips, or kitchen waste will not suck nitrogen out of the soil when applied over the soil surface as mulch; likewise, un-composted plant material does not acidify soil. 

Both of those ideas can be found in some gardening resources, and have a kernel of truth that does not apply to mulch.

Why do you need Mulch?

A newly planted tree (especially a large one) is at risk because it has to grow new roots - these are vulnerable to competing weeds and or lack of water.
Mulch holds back the weeds, shades the soil, and traps moisture.

Over the long term, mulch can transform the worst soils into rich, deep, dark topsoil.

Mulch can even give you a summer holiday!

• If your new trees are well mulched, you can water them thoroughly and safely go away for a long weekend even in a heatwave.
• If you are going away for 7-10 days, you will need someone to come in & water everything well once in the middle, twice if your soil type is dry (like sandy soil).

How to apply organic matter Mulch: Spread it a good inch thick on the ground around your plants every year.

• Don't pile it up against their stems: leave about 6 inches clear.
• Don't make the mulch layer too high - you don't want the roots to grow up into it. 1-2 inches, applied yearly is plenty.