Organics are the best way to go in your garden. Plenty of organic mulches are available, and they often can be had for free.
Right out in your back yard or your neighbor’s you will find one good material: grass clippings. Grass clippings are rich in nutrients, so mulching with them gives a “weed and feed” effect. Just make sure that any clippings you use are not from lawns treated with herbicide.
You also might have piles of fall leaves or pine needles. More good mulch.
Wood chips are an organic mulching material that you can often get for free, or you can buy them. Although poor in nutrients, wood chips are relatively long-lasting on the soil so are particularly good for using beneath trees and shrubs, and around perennial flowers.
Similar in all respects to wood chips is sawdust. Paper, another good organic mulch, is another wood product. Although not very attractive, a few layers of paper — either newspaper, commercial paper mulch or building paper (red rosin paper) — will kill weeds and seal in moisture. Cover the paper with something more attractive, such as wood chips, to hold it down and hide it.
Straw and hay are also excellent mulches. Straw is just stems and leaves, but hay contains seed heads, which can germinate and become weeds. These weeds may not be a problem if you occasionally fluff up the hay mulch to uproot the weed seedlings while they are still small.
Salt hay comes from wetlands so its seeds will not thrive in garden soils.
Finally, we come to designer organic mulches, not necessarily better than other organic mulches but conveying a certain look. Buckwheat hulls and cocoa bean hulls look pretty blanketing the ground with a uniform, pebbly brown texture.
The only organic mulch to avoid is peat moss. The problem with peat is that once it dries, it’s hard to wet again, during which time it is dusty and repels water.
The best time to lay down any organic mulch is after a rain or watering, when the soil is thoroughly moist.
Put the mulch on thickly — 4 inches for fluffy materials or 2 inches for denser materials — but not right up against succulent young stems or they are apt to rot.
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