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Rethinking the power of mulch
Published: July 25, 2007
The little voice that runs through my head as I do yard work was giving me a really hard time yesterday.
It blames me for all the weeds that are growing among my flowers and wants to know why - for Heaven's sake, why - I didn't mulch everything in the spring.
I just rip the weeds silently. I have no response. Why didn't I mulch? I don't know. I wish I had.
I think one of the things that held me back in the spring was fear. I've never had one of those mountains of mulch unloaded at my house. I'm not sure where I would put it and I'm not sure I could handle the pressure of conquering it in order to move it out of the way of other things.
Right around the time I was fretting about this, I toured a professional rose garden for a newspaper story and the gardener had me convinced that mulch is a scam. He implied that it was some sort of plot on the part of the logging industry to get rid of useless bark. His staff used no mulch, which I later found out is traditional for formal rose gardens. Instead, they scratch up the soil with a rake-like tool to prevent weeds from taking root.
That was all I needed to hear at that moment: mulch is a scam. I never got around to placing an order and having mulch delivered. I weeded everything meticulously. I installed edging (well, some edging - there's still a big strip strangling the snow blower in the garage). I just stopped short of that final, critical step: the mulch.
So now every few weeks, the borders along the front and side of my house get overgrown and it drives me nuts and sends me into a weeding frenzy.
Maybe if I had a professional staff to rake up the soil, mulch wouldn't be necessary. I just have my bare hands, my dirty fingernails and the mental critic who heckles me as I crouch in the garden beds, ripping up handfuls of weeds.
Obviously mulch is good. Last year at a UMass Extension workshop on chemical-free lawn care, the weed expert recommended mulch as the most basic chemical-free form of weed control, as long is it's not too deep and it's not formed into volcanoes around the base of trees. The best mulch is lighter in color and loose, he said. It needs to be refreshed every few years as it breaks down.
I still have a few garden beds to weed, and I'm tempted to take pictures to remind myself next spring why mulch is good. A little work up front could have saved a lot of work right now.
It blames me for all the weeds that are growing among my flowers and wants to know why - for Heaven's sake, why - I didn't mulch everything in the spring.
I just rip the weeds silently. I have no response. Why didn't I mulch? I don't know. I wish I had.
I think one of the things that held me back in the spring was fear. I've never had one of those mountains of mulch unloaded at my house. I'm not sure where I would put it and I'm not sure I could handle the pressure of conquering it in order to move it out of the way of other things.
Right around the time I was fretting about this, I toured a professional rose garden for a newspaper story and the gardener had me convinced that mulch is a scam. He implied that it was some sort of plot on the part of the logging industry to get rid of useless bark. His staff used no mulch, which I later found out is traditional for formal rose gardens. Instead, they scratch up the soil with a rake-like tool to prevent weeds from taking root.
That was all I needed to hear at that moment: mulch is a scam. I never got around to placing an order and having mulch delivered. I weeded everything meticulously. I installed edging (well, some edging - there's still a big strip strangling the snow blower in the garage). I just stopped short of that final, critical step: the mulch.
So now every few weeks, the borders along the front and side of my house get overgrown and it drives me nuts and sends me into a weeding frenzy.
Maybe if I had a professional staff to rake up the soil, mulch wouldn't be necessary. I just have my bare hands, my dirty fingernails and the mental critic who heckles me as I crouch in the garden beds, ripping up handfuls of weeds.
Obviously mulch is good. Last year at a UMass Extension workshop on chemical-free lawn care, the weed expert recommended mulch as the most basic chemical-free form of weed control, as long is it's not too deep and it's not formed into volcanoes around the base of trees. The best mulch is lighter in color and loose, he said. It needs to be refreshed every few years as it breaks down.
I still have a few garden beds to weed, and I'm tempted to take pictures to remind myself next spring why mulch is good. A little work up front could have saved a lot of work right now.
nnn
Julie Kirkwood's "Yard Dirt" appears weekly in the Home North section. Reach her at 978-946-2251 or jkirkwood@eagletribune.com.
