Organic Gardening Basics for Mulching, Feeding and Pest Control

article image
by Adobestock/zlikovec

Here’s another installment of Jeanie Darlington’s warm introduction to organic gardening basics.

Organic Garden Mulch

If you’ve been working very hard on your garden, planting, cultivating, weeding, watering, etc., you can relax now because your work is done. If your seedlings are up to at least two inches or so, apply a mulch and then forget about garden work except for picking harvest.

A mulch is a layer of usually but not always organic material laid on top of all the exposed soil in your garden. Hay or straw, grass clippings, leaves or leaf mold; shells and hulls of rice, buckwheat, cottonseed, cocoa beans, oats and peanuts; seaweed or kelp, pine needles, sawdust, newspaper, old carpets and even black plastic. Any of these will do. The purposes of a mulch are to conserve moisture, regulate the soil temperature so it stays cool in summer and warm in winter, discourage weeds, prevent a hard top crust from forming, prevent erosion, and eventually to decay and add a rich layer of humus to your soil.

Since we don’t get rain in this part of California between May and October, mulches are a must in my opinion. Last summer, I applied a mulch and then watered my garden deeply once a week. (Frequent and light waterings cause shallow feeder roots and this in turn causes plants to wilt easily if these roots do not receive moisture.) I never cultivated or pulled a single weed. For my mulch, I used hay that I gathered from the vacant lot next door. The hay kept the vegetables from getting muddy when I watered, and it kept things like squash and tomatoes from rotting since they were not touching the wet soil.

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368