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20 Garden Mulching Tips from Seasoned Growers

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Mulching is one of the best things you can do for your garden. A generous layer of mulch over the soil surface will suppress weeds, retain moisture, and provide and soil enrichment as it decomposes.

Mulching is one of the best things you can do for your garden. A generous layer of mulch over the soil surface will suppress weeds, retain moisture, and provide and soil enrichment as it decomposes. Mulch also helps protect the soil from erosion, moderates the soil temperature, and makes the garden look neat and tidy. Mulching has some disadvantages as well. It can smother your plants, tie up nutrients, add unwanted chemicals, grow fungus, and slow water penetration.

Mulch also helps protect the soil from erosion, moderates the soil temperature, and makes the garden look neat and tidy. Mulching has some disadvantages as well. It can smother your plants, tie up nutrients, add unwanted chemicals, grow fungus, and slow water penetration.

Mulching is one of the best things you can do for your garden. A generous layer of mulch over the soil surface will suppress weeds, retain moisture, and provide and soil enrichment as it decomposes. Mulch also helps protect the soil from erosion, moderates the soil temperature, and makes the garden look neat and tidy. Mulching has some disadvantages as well. It can smother your plants, tie up nutrients, add unwanted chemicals, grow fungus, and slow water penetration.
Keep the mulch a few inches from the plants, so they are not smothered.

I reached out to my gardening friends and asked if they would share their advice and experiences with using mulch in the garden. This resulted in a collection of seasoned knowledge of various mulching methods for vegetable gardens, flowerbeds, and landscaping. Discover mulching methods that will work in your garden and heed some mulch warnings too.

Mulching Tips and Techniques:

20 Garden Mulching Tips from Seasoned Growers | Grow a Good Life
Laying a soaker hose beneath the mulch provides water directly to the soil. The mulch prevents moisture from evaporating.

How to Find Free Mulch:

20 Garden Mulching Tips from Seasoned Growers | Grow a Good Life
Garlic bed mulched with shredded leaves – FREE

Some Cautions About Mulch:

20 Garden Mulching Tips from Seasoned Growers | Grow a Good Life
Bush beans mulched with straw

I hope you gained some knowledge from these experienced gardeners about which mulch you should use in your garden.

The most important point to understand is there is no one method that fits all gardens. Each type of mulch has pros and cons, making it suitable for some situations and not others. Regardless of which method you choose, you should mulch. So which mulch is right for you?

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Mulching is one of the best things you can do for your vegetable garden. It protects the soil from erosion, moderates the soil temperature, and makes the garden look neat and tidy. Here are 20 tips for mulching your garden.

8 Comments

  1. i had an older man said he takes old carpet a covers garden and then cuts holes into the carpet for each plat or seed. Said water goes thru carpet and the cover keeps weeds out.Has anyone tried this . Will this work or not

    1. Terry, While using old carpet as a garden cover might seem like a creative idea, I would advise against it. Carpets are typically treated with various chemicals and may contain substances that could be harmful to plants and soil. These chemicals can potentially leach into the ground, affecting the overall health of your garden. Instead, I would recommend using the organic methods mentioned in the article.

  2. Hi! Thanks for the post with all this info. It’s a lot to digest but very well worth the effort. A book was brought to my attention recently, quite possibly by one of your recommended blog postings but I don’t quite remember, called “Gardening Without Work – For the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent” by Ruth Stout. It was written back in the 1960’s and is an enjoyable, humorous read — all about the joys of mulching and her years of positive experience with it. I highly recommend it to your readers. Thanks again!

  3. I not only mulch with leaves, trimmings, etc., I bury all of the vegetable and fruit trimmings from the kitchen. I have done this since 1972. It takes about six weeks to deteriorate in our soil. I also have a barrel composter. Busy, busy. Lorraine
    Surf City, CA So. California

  4. Mulching is definitely something I need to be better at. I learned the hard way this year how easily strawberries can rot if in contact with the soil. Won’t make that mistake again.

  5. I love, love, love mulch – thanks so much, Rachel, for this compilation of posts. I’m really short on time right now, but I’ve bookmarked this page so that I can give them all a read in September when things calm down a bit.

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