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Jim K's Landscaping
Guide to Selecting Mulch
Click here for our order form.Or stop in for a sample!
We can help you calculate how much mulch you need!
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*Prices are subject to change at any time
* Landscaper Discounts Available
*Additional Charge to Have the Mulch Spread into the Beds
*For delivery a check must be in the door before driver will dump, and a visual marker must be present in the driveway to indicate where mulch is to be dumped. Drivers will only dump on driveways and will not drive on grass areas.
If you're looking for a way to save lots of time in the garden, look no further. Mulching your flower and vegetable beds will drastically reduce the amount of time spent weeding, watering and fighting pests. Mulch also improves the appearance of your garden, and keep dirt from splashing up on your flowers and vegetables when it rains.
If possible, consider using an organic mulch. Organic mulches are those that used to be living material, such as bark, straw, leaves, grass clippings and pine needles. These organic mulches improve the soil by adding nutrients as they decompose and encouraging earthworm activity. Organic mulches aren't perfect, though. If you have problems with rodents, you may want to choose an inorganic mulch. In very moist climates, organic mulches may hold too much moisture. The excessive moisture will encourage slugs and snails, and may even cause the stems of your plants that come in contact with the mulch to rot.
When determining which garden mulch or landscape mulch is best suited for your landscaping needs, there are many factors to consider. The question can best be tackled by presenting the various garden mulches or landscaping mulches separately, but judging each based on the same criteria.
Before beginning, let's look at a preliminary question that many landscaping enthusiasts have: How does garden mulch affect soil pH? More specifically, does any garden mulch lower soil pH, as many have long suspected?
The composition of your soil pH has a hefty impact on plant health. Since garden mulch could influence that composition as it decomposes, it's understandable that people (myself included) have often expressed concern over how garden mulch selection impacts soil pH. Does the use of garden mulch composed of pine needles lead to an acidic soil? What about garden mulch composed of oak leaves?
The most widely held view at present seems to be that garden mulch has little impact on soil pH. For instance, while oak-leaf garden mulch may be acidic when fresh, most experts now say that it becomes more and more alkaline as it decomposes. Furthermore, based on my reading, it is now generally thought that a garden mulch composed of pine needles lowers soil pH to only a negligible degree, if at all.
With the question of the potential impact of garden mulch on soil pH out of the way, let's reflect on some other issues surrounding garden mulch selection -- some of which are quantifiable, others of which boil down to personal landscaping preferences. We will have to prioritize in order to make a decision, since a garden mulch that scores high in one category might perform miserably in another. Two obvious uses of garden mulch to which the reader will find little or no reference in this article are weed suppression and erosion control. They have been omitted for a simple reason: any garden mulch employed properly will cut down on weeds and erosion. These are the two constants in this discussion.
Notes About Mulching and Garden Mulch
- "Insulation value in summer" is judged by the degree to which the garden mulch can keep the soil beneath cool and moist. A successful summer insulator will both reduce the need for watering and protect roots against extreme heat.
- The consideration of whether or not the garden mulch needs to be removed in spring is grounded in the fact that heavy organic garden mulches can smother emerging spring plants. This is obviously less of a factor, however, for plants that remain alive aboveground, throughout the winter. But even the latter can profit from having the soil around their roots warmed by the spring sun, a process facilitated by the temporary removal of the garden mulch. In the case of plastic sheet mulch, this factor is irrelevant, since holes are poked through the material to provide access for the plants.
- "Nourishment and aeration afforded to underlying soil by decomposition" is one of the criteria used in the following pages to compare the various landscape mulches. However, do not be fooled by the word "nourishment" into thinking that compost and garden mulch are synonymous. For details on the distinction read, "Fall Cleanup: Raking Leaves for Compost and Garden Mulch."
