Your Garden + Natural Mulches = Better Harvests

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THE ADVANTAGES OF MULCHING

All types of gardening benefit directly or indirectly from mulching and through practice you'll learn what type of mulch and what thickness is best for every plant. Keep in mind, however, that acid-loving plants, such as Rhododendrons and all evergreens, prefer an acid mulch like peat moss or pine needles while non-acid-loving plants, such as most fruits and vegetables, prefer dried hay, grass clippings and other non-acid mulches.

There are many advantages to using mulch in your summer garden. For instance:

1. All natural mulches conserve soil moisture. With a constant supply of moisture about their roots plants grow steadily. This produces more robust growth, bumper crops of tastier fruits and vegetables and bigger flowers. A mulch can also save valuable plants during heavy droughts when there is no water available for irrigation.

2. In dry, arid regions a mulch will prevent rain and wind erosion. And when rains do fall in such an area the water is quickly absorbed by the porous earth beneath a mulch. As an added bonus, this rain carries free nitrogen which it absorbed while passing through the atmosphere and the free nitrogen becomes immediately available to plants as food.

3. A good mulch controls all annual and perennial weeds. Should a weed appear it can easily be pulled by hand from the soft earth below.

4. All soils, no matter how fertile, can stand a little improving. Organic mulches quickly decay, merge with the topsoil and enrich it with plant nutrients. As soil particles absorb the decayed organic matter, they become more crumbly in texture. This creates air spaces through which oxygen can reach the roots and improves water penetration. The aeration and penetration of water stimulates root growth and biological activity in the soil and the result's greater soil fertility.

5. A thick mulch is also an excellent controller of soil temperature. Soil bacteria, which are constantly busy releasing plant nutrients. from mulch and applied fertilizers, work best in a soil temperature of 70 to 85 degrees F. When temperatures drop below or rise above this mark, bacterial action slows down or stops completely. A good mulch will maintain the right working temperatures for soil bacteria throughout summer regardless of outside conditions which, again, means your soil will steadily increase in fertility.

6. When well-aged manures, tobacco stalks, soy bean hay or grass clippings from well-fed lawns are used as mulch, very little or no fertilizer is needed throughout the gardening season. As these different organic products decay, they slowly release all the nutrients a plant needs for good growth without burning its delicate feeder roots.

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