Why Mulching May be the Best Thing for Your Garden

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Do you mulch your garden and other plants? If not you may be missing out on some fantastic benefits of mulching.

I mulch all my plants--if I don't have mulch of some sort I will wait to plant or get a load of mulch as soon as possible. So why do I like mulch so much? And what is mulch?

Let's start with defining mulch first but before we do make sure to check out this week's blog post--What is Mulching? The Complete Introduction to Mulching--which is part 1 of a 2 part series all about mulching and how to use mulch on your homestead or in your garden.

What is Mulch?

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Large piles of wood chips at a composting place in my area. They give out the wood chips for free since it is a waste product for them

Mulch is any material that is providing a cover over the ground and can be broken up into 2 main categories:

  • Organic Mulch
  • Inorganic Mulch

Organic mulch is made up of material that will naturally breakdown like wood chips, straw/hay, fall leaves, etc. Inorganic mulch on the other hand are materials like weed fabrics and black plastic but also rocks.

The only type of inorganic mulch that I use on my homestead are rocks. For the most part I stick with wood chips and fall leaves as my sources of mulch.

Part 2 in this blog post series will go into more detail on the different types of mulch. That post will be published on February 25th 2019.

Benefits of Mulch

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One of my hedgerows in spring after being planted over the winter. You can see all the mulch I used when making the hedgerow.

Organic mulch like wood chips provide a number of benefits to your garden and homestead. Here are 5 of them:

  1. Feeds soil life, building soil, and provides nutrients to your plants.
  2. Increases the percent organic material in the soil.
  3. Reduces evaporation, increases water retention of the soil, and reduces drought stress.
  4. Suppresses weeds.
  5. Can be used to prepare sites for future planting.

All those benefits are fantastic but let's look at the first one a bit more. Mulch feeds soil life but what is soil life? This broad category includes critters like earthworms but also fungi.

It turns out that supporting fungi is one of the biggest benefits organic mulch can provide to your homestead and garden.

Here is a great video that quickly explains why fungi may be your best helper as a homesteader and gardener.

What About You?

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Mulching is awesome and provides a ton of benefits. I can't get enough of it!

But what about you? Are you using mulch on your homestead or in your garden? I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment with your answer. Also, if you liked this post and found it helpful please upvote and resteem it.

And don't forget to check out the blog post on my website that this post summarizes.

Thank you all and have fun mulching!

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How much work and hassle you save yourself from by not tidying up your garden, by just leaving the old leaves beneath the bushes and trees... Some people just don't want to live with their garden and plants, they want to command them.

Yup, all of that material is a great source of mulch. I leave the leaves and branches on the ground. It breaks down and improves the soil. Thanks for your reply!

I'm a mulch maniac. No one understands!

lol, well I think there are more mulch maniacs out there than you might think :) Most of the arborists in my area have waiting lists for wood chip deliveries!

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