In Today’s throwaway society, there is absolutely no need to go out and purchase mulch material for your garden, unless it is for the particular aesthetic appearance, “The Look”, sake of the mulch material.

Were you aware that there are a number of mulching materials that you can obtain from around your own community that are free, and some of which can even be even delivered to you for nothing as well.

Impossible you might say. Well I mulch my gardens fairly heavily, and I never pay a cent for the mulch material. As a matter of fact, most of the mulch is willingly delivered to my home for nothing. As the former owners are only too glad to see the back of it, as it would cost them money, time and effort to find other ways of getting rid of it.

I also combine these outside sources of mulch with my own compost, weeds and other organic matter mixed through to achieve a great result in my garden, and so all that it costs me is time and effort.

So what am I talking about? While some of the below list is delivered free, other items I pick up myself, depending on time, circumstances, importance etc.

Grass Clippings from other people in the area or from lawn-mowing contractors.

Wood shavings from local wood turners and carvers, ( Do not use shavings from treated timber).

Small amounts of solid fill from friends who are excavating. This is to assist in raising garden beds, in my heavy clay soil.

Light prunings from shrubs which is shredded by me or put whole into garden

Heavier sticks and logs, which are turned into trellis, garden stakes, garden edges, seats, frames, log planters etc. while they slowly decay.

Newspaper, cardboard, non-rubber carpet underlay, and even carpet and carpet squares. Which is put under other mulch to prevent grass and weed regrowth

Animal manures sometimes mixed with straw from places like Racetracks and Showgrounds, Pony Clubs, Stables etc. I contact them well beforehand to see if any is available.

To this I also add my own weeds, throwing away some which can still be a potential problem, or burying them below the bottom most layer of mulch material to stop them regrowing. Another item I add is any old potting mix from deceased plants or when repotting plants.

Being a fairly lazy gardener, I throw the material around a bit at a time, as they are available, and let nature mix them for me. On a couple of occasions I have received a bit too much wood shavings so these became path material between some of the garden beds, with a heavy underlay of newspapers. People even tell me that it looks and feels good underfoot.

Never put a large amount of fresh animal manure on any garden, as it will burn any plant around it. Be extremely sparing or let it age first for a few months before applying it to the garden.

I have been living in my new house for about fifteen months, and the mulch layer in all my gardens (there were no gardens originally), is about 10 cm or 4 inches deep. None of which I have paid for and little that I have had to even pick up for myself.

People are even starting to comment on how fast the plants in my gardens are growing in the local heavy black clay soils, and they are surprised when I tell them that I have never bothered to fertilise the plants. The reason for this is that the earliest laid mulch material, is now broken down into plant nutrients and is now feeding my plants as a plant nutrient soup aided by the soil life which has suddenly started appearing in my gardens.

Another benefit that has started to appear in the last few months is the arrival of insect eating wildlife into my garden. Predatory insects and birds are now visiting my gardens on a regular basis, where I saw none this time last year. Bees and butterflies are also starting to visit many of the plants, which have come into flower for the first time this year.

So what can you do to start locating your own supplies of free mulch material, well here are a number of suggestions.

Put a little sign near your gate, something along the lines of ‘Organic mulch required’, or ‘Lawn clipping wanted’. There are sure to be a number of local people who are currently throwing theirs away in your community or even local area. Never mulch solely with grass clippings as they form an impenetrable layer that air and water cannot get through. Always mix it with other things to stop it ‘thatching’, just like a roof over the soil.

See if you can get into contact with local people who are into woodturning and carving, or even local sawmills. And come to some arrangement about unpreserved wood shavings.

Check the local phonebook for local showgrounds/racetracks/stables etc, to find out if any have stable or manure waste to give away, for people willing to pick them up In other words, start talking around the place that you are after mulch materials and they will soon start coming to you.

The only caution with using other peoples waste material is the chance that you might also import other peoples pests and weeds. I have rarely found it a problem because of heavy mulch on mulch routines. But it is possible.

One point being that when you first start applying mulch to your garden you may see some nitrogen deficiencies occur in some plants. This is because the organisms that are breaking down the mulch material are using up all the available resources of it during the initial breakdown. Once you have gotten past this time the old composted material provide more than enough nitrogen for future processes.

Another thing to be careful of is not to bury or mulch up against the stems of wanted plants, as it may cause further problems for your plants in rot problems around the collar of the stems.

So get out there and talk around the community, find the contacts, believe it or not they will be as grateful as you to solve their particular problems of waste reduction. As well as that, you may start making some new friendships out of the deal; I know I have.

When you're outside puttering around in your garden, you probably feel tranquil, serene, at one with Mother Nature. It's just you and your plants, getting along fantastically together. The last thing you want is for that peaceful silence to be obliterated by an intimidating gardening contraption like the chipper shredder. But fear not, those scared easily by loud noises and heavy machinery: chippers are not like their predecessors, and they're only getting better.

The chipper shredder is interesting in that it's one of the most versatile gardening tools around. Sure, you may scoff at the idea of having a machine assist with something that's so essentially natural. Yet after weeks of turning over that compost heap or letting those bags of leaves pile up, it's best to turn to a little extra help. For those that compost with gusto, a chipper shredder may already be sitting in your backyard somewhere, happily assisting with converting leaves into mulch and spitting out wood chips for ground cover. For the lazy composter, it may not even have occurred to you to enlist a hunk of metal to help make mulch. For those that don't even compost, the chipper shredder is still handy; with its chopping and dicing abilities (like an oversized piece of kitchenware seen on late night infomercials) will speed up the process of eliminating dead brush and tree limbs from the yard.

Old chippers were often clunky, deafening, and dangerous. New chippers tend to be lightweight, safer, and much quieter. The newer electric models are also less likely to emit strange, toxic odors like the older gas powered models, and they're healthier for the environment. They work well for long periods of time, given that you don't shove copious amounts of tree excess in all at once. The more powerful the shredder, the more it can handle; for backyard home work, smaller chippers are your best bet. Furthermore, larger chippers are great for clearing acres of dead tree brush and trunks. For those with compost piles or ordinary yard debris, the smaller chippers work very well for creating mulch. Distribute your chipper's finished product over your flower bed, and you can be witness to a worm colony growing rapidly in your compost pile. The best part is feeling proud knowing that you didn't really have to do much-your chipper shredder did all the work for you.

Leftover plant stalks? Stick 'em in the shredder. Trimming from your shrubs? Throw 'em in the chipper. Brittle, dry leaves? Why, just chuck those suckers on in. Get all the mulch you need for composting while saving yourself time and effort by using a chipper shredder. Now all you have to do is putter in your garden and enjoy the silence of happy, healthy plants.

Most Feng Shui bamboos are happiest in a moderately acidic loamy soil. If your soil is very heavy you can add organic material. It can be dug into the soil where the bamboo is to be planted, but the easiest thing is to mulch very heavily and let the earthworms do the work. Spread two or more inches of mulch in the area around the Feng Shui bamboo, and where you want the Feng Shui bamboo to grow.

Feng Shui Bamboo is a forest plant and does best if a mulch is kept over the roots and rhizomes. It is best not to rake or sweep up the Feng Shui bamboo leaves from under the plant, as they keep the soil soft, and moist, and recycle silica and other natural chemicals necessary to the Feng Shui bamboo.

A low-growing shade-tolerant groundcover plant that will allow the leaves to fall through to form a mulch without being visible will work if you find the dry leaf mulch objectionable. Almost any organic material is a good mulch. Grass is one of the best, as it is high in nitrogen and silica. Home made or commercial compost is great. Hay is a good mulch too but hay and manure are often a source of weed seeds, so that can be a problem.

Any kind of manure is good, if it isn't too hot. Limited amounts of very hot manures like chicken are OK if used with care. At our nursery we use a large amount of chipped trees from tree pruning services. This can harbor pathogens that can affect some trees or shrubs, but the Feng Shui bamboo loves it.

Pls visit http://www.bamboofengshui.com/ for advise on other Bamboo element that can enhance your Feng Shui such as Bamboo Chimes, Bamboo Paintings, Bamboo Feng Shui Books and Bamboo Plants.

The word “mulch” comes from the old English word “melsc” – meaning rotten hay. In today’s language it has come to mean any material that covers the soil to preserve moisture content, prevent soil erosion and inhibit weed growth. For organic gardening I choose materials that will break down over time, feeding my plants and contributing to the amount of humus in the soil.

Many materials are suitable to use as mulch, such as: leaves, straw / hay, sawdust, gravel / rocks, paper / cardboard, grass clippings, carpet underfelt and even plastic. Each one has its own benefits and disadvantages.

Dark mulches warm the soil, whereas light coloured mulches will keep the soul cooler. In a cool climate a light straw mulch will hold back the development of many hot season vegetables – so take care with your choice of mulch and the time of year you apply it.

I’ve heard it said that mulches can be a refuge for problem garden pests, but nature balances this with enough predators to consume any rise in pest numbers.

Leaves are the most natural mulch of all. However most of the nutritional content has been taken from the tree before the leaf falls to the ground. Many leaves contain tannins and some have growth suppressants (eucalypts & pine needles for example), so it’s better to either add them to your compost heap or place them in a wire container and allow them to decompose for a year or so and become leaf mould, them use as mulch.

Straw / Hay is my preferred method of mulching in my organic food garden. The main advantage over many mulches is that it slowly releases nutrients to feed the plants it surrounds. One disadvantage is that hay may contain weed seeds, but they are usually easy to pull. That is why I prefer pea straw – usually the only weeds are peas and they add nitrogen to the soil. Another problem can be that it may become water repellent. But this is not a problem if you trickle or flood irrigate your food plots.

Sawdust is probably best used by composting it before laying as a mulch as it may rob the soil of nitrogen if your soil is poor to begin with. Also, it can become water repellent. However if you have a good supply it makes an excellent soft, natural looking covering for pathways.

Gravel / Rocks are best used outside of your veggie garden unless you live in a cool climate area and use them around warm climate plants, such as pumpkins and tomatoes. Rocks store heat from the sun during the day and slowly release it through the night.

They can also be used in arid areas around larger plants and trees. Water condenses on the underside of the rocks as they cool during the night helping to keep plants moist. The disadvantage with rocks is that weeds will grow around them.

Paper / Cardboard are both quite useful as mulches. I often use thick layers of newspaper (which I wet before laying) underneath pea-straw or pine bark. The layers need to overlap about 15cm to prevent weeds from coming through. Don’t use pages with coloured ink as they may contain heavy metals.

Cardboard can make a great mulch under young trees. You can secure it with rocks in a decorative way in addition to straw or bark. Using cardboard beneath sawdust for your garden paths will prevent most weeds.

Grass clippings can be utilised as a thin mulch under trees and shrubs that will feed your plants as it breaks down. Take care not to pile on too thickly though as you will end up with a water repelling, smelly blob!

Carpet underfelt makes an excellent mulch in your organic garden. It won’t blow away, it’s easy to cut to insert your seedlings, it allows air to penetrate and it holds moisture very well. You must make sure that it is the older underfelt though, not the modern foam type.

Black plastic has the advantage of being cheap, easy to install and a great weed suppressor, but its disadvantages are many. It doesn’t feed the soil, it deteriorates with direct sunlight and doesn’t allow the natural gas exchanges between the air and soil.

Whatever your choice of mulch, your organic garden will be more productive and well balanced if you choose a feeding kind of mulch. Remember too that mulches should not come into contact with the stems of you plants as this may cause them to rot.

Mulching is the final step in the process of installing your landscape.

When done properly, mulch will give your landscape the new showroom shine, the WOW factor.

Do this to enhance the look before you mulch

Remove any rocks bigger than a golf ball or debris left in your landscape.

Prune any wild hairs on the tops of your new or existing plants.

Fertilize all of your plants.

Make sure all of your edges are neat and straight.

Using Roundup

If you have an existing landscape, you may have some weeds in your beds. Take your weed eater and cut the weeds close to ground level, leaving some leaves on the plants. Roundup needs leaf surface to spray onto or the chemical will not be absorbed into the plant.

Spray weeds with roundup and let sit for a couple hours. The chemical will dry and be absorbed by the weed. Roundup will then work its way thru the weed, killing down to the root. You can now mulch right over the top.

Make sure the chemical has dried before you walk back into the garden to mulch. Roundup that is still wet will attach itself to your shoes. When you walk back into your lawn from the garden to get more mulch, the chemical will rub off your shoes and kill the grass.

Combining Evergreen Beds

If you have an opportunity to combine some of the larger evergreens into one big bed, do so at this time. Eliminating the mowing and weed eating under the pines will save a lot of time and the finished look is spectacular

Pull the edge from under the pines all the way out until it is 1 foot past where the bottom branches end now. Paint a line all the way around and follow the same steps of weed eating and spraying with roundup above.

Be extremely careful about knowing where you step under the pine beds. The bed space is a lot bigger and the chance of walking thru roundup and killing grass is even greater. If there is a lot of spraying to be done under the pines, I would suggest buying a dye that you can put into your sprayer to tell you where the spray is.

Cleanup any dead leaf or perennial debris. Cut down your ornamental grasses

Final grade the slope away from any objects (house, shed, etc.) to help with drainage and level any footprints or depressions left in the soil.

When you grade along the area where your beds meet the foundations of buildings, make sure this area is smooth. When you mulch this area, the smoother the soil is, the better the finished product looks. You don’t want this area all bumpy and rippled; your eye will be pulled right to waves.

Time to Mulch

Mulch is used to enhance the look of every landscape. It hides all the imperfections and shows only the beauty.

Mulch is the perfect finish to all the hard work put into installing a landscape.

Mulch is not only limited to color. It helps keep weeds under control, helps with erosion, keeps water from evaporating quickly around the roots of plants and is used as a cushion for our children when they fall in their playgrounds.

Mulch is a necessary part of any landscape, use it wisely.

How much did you say I need?

Figure out the quantity of mulch you will need by doing the same calculations we did for the soil amendments. Length of bed x width x depth of mulch divided by 27 = number of yards.

Bed equals 20 feet by 10 feet= 200 square feet 2” of mulch---2” divided by 12”=.17 200x.17=34 cubic feet 27 is the cubic feet factor you divide by 34 divided by 27= 1.26 yards of mulch.

Every yard of mulch is equal to 9 bags of mulch- each bag is 3 cubic feet. That is 9 (3cubic feet) bags.

Buy bulk if you can

If you need a large quantity, buy the bulk mulch and have it delivered to your house. It is usually cheaper and not as heavy. Mulch in bags is sometimes wet when filled at the mulch plant, and can be very heavy and hard to maneuver around the garden.

Try to have the mulch put in an area that is readily accessible and easy to get to the garden. Figure this spot out before the mulch is delivered or you will spend a lot of your energy hauling the mulch back and forth from the pile.

I recommend dyed brown mulch but be careful

If you are going to use dyed mulch, and I recommend brown only, know that when the dye is sprayed onto the mulch, it needs to dry before you use it. If you have a pile delivered to your house on your concrete driveway and it rains before the dye dries, the dye will stain your concrete. Be careful and know the forecast.

I highly recommend brown dyed mulch for any landscape. Deep rich brown color remains all season. You can’t beat the color and there’s no reason for a fall mulch. Fall mulching is used primarily to refresh the color in the landscape. If the initial mulch is still holding its color in the fall, there is no reason to spend the extra money.

You need to be very careful that a second mulching does not become excessive in the amounts on the beds.

The look of any garden after the spring mulch is applied is phenomenal. The only problem is that shredded hardwood mulch starts losing its color after the first month, quickly deteriorating from there. Brown dyed mulch will look as good in September as it did in March. Try it you will love it. How do I spread it?

Use a wheel barrow, trash can or shovel to start dumping piles around your garden. There really is no easy way to get the mulch into the beds. This is why it is important to dump the pile as close to the garden as possible. Scoop it up, fill up the wheel barrow and dump it out. Use whatever is easiest for you.

Spread to a depth of 1” on existing mulch or 2” on a new landscape. The total amount of mulch on your beds at any time should never exceed 2”. If you have existing mulch that is at 1” now, you only want to install 1” of fresh mulch on top.

Spreading new mulch? Only pinch an inch

If you are about to put new mulch on existing mulch, it is always a good idea to use a cultivator or hard rake to loosen up the top layer of the old first. This allows more oxygen to get inside the mulch layer and help with decomposition. The mulch on your landscape beds should break down some every year.

Mulch over time will clump or mat together from the compaction caused by the wetting of the spring and summer rains and roots growing thru. This matting will actually shed water away from your plants instead of absorbing like mulch is designed to do. This becomes a real problem when mulch is continually piled on top of itself year after year and never cultivated or removed.

Mulch Volcanoes? First wonder of the landscape world

Do not pile mulch up against the trunks of trees or shrubs. Over time the moisture from the mulch will soften the bark, possibly allowing insect damage

Do not pile mulch around the trunks of laurel shrubs; it will promote an insect known as a borer. The moisture from the mulch will soften the bark and allow the insect to deposit its eggs into the trunk where they will grow, burrow thru the wood and kill the shrub.

Do not pile mulch up on tree rings, making the mulch volcano. As the mulch becomes deeper and deeper, moisture will stop getting thru to the root system. The mulch will get wet but the roots will stay dry. The roots will start to grow into the mulch searching for the water, instead of staying in the soil. When the weather gets into a drought situation, the mulch will dry out first, the roots in the mulch will dry out and the tree will stress.

Mulch around tree rings should be almost even with the ground. Newly installed trees will be a little higher because of the soil piled around them, but after one year, the soil should be smoothed out and mulched lower.

Good luck and take pictures of the finished product. Your landscape will never look better.

The use of some sort of material to be spread on the ground to a certain height, which acts as an insulating layer between the soil's surface and the atmosphere, or mulching in short, is a technique being increasingly employed by professional horticulturalists. Some home gardeners may still be insufficiently aware of its importance, so in this article I'll tell you why a mulch layer is so important, then I'll go into the different types of mulch, their various qualities and how they should be used.

Amongst many benefits, a mulch on the soil -

* Significantly reduces weeds. This is true of annuals although mulching does not generally prevent the growth of perennial weeds
* Significantly reduces the evaporation of moisture from the soil surface and is therefore an essential part of water conserving gardening
* Reduces soil erosion caused by wind and rain. This is a fantastically important benefit
* Moderates the top-soil temperature. So in the winter a layer of mulch can prevent freezing, and in hot- summer climates, prevent the top soil reaching temperatures that inhibit plant growth
* Is aesthetically superior to the sight of bare soil and irrigation pipes

Taking aesthetic considerations into account, there are broadly speaking two types of mulch which are viable in a garden. Organic mulches such as wood chippings, and natural inorganic mulches such as pebbles. Which is preferable?

The use of decorative pebbles is often part of an overall design. They are particularly appropriate, associatively, in dry climate gardens. But there are a number of drawbacks involved. Some aggregates such as dark stones of volcanic origin have been found to actually increase the top-soil temperature. Furthermore, adding organic feeds to the soil, something that should be done once or twice a year, becomes difficult and tiresome. The use of a chemical fertilizer pump offers a way round this, but sets in train a number of problems. Relying on chemical fertilizers as the only method of feeding is dreadful gardening! For further discussion on the automatic fertilizer pumps, see a previous article of mine called "The truth about fertilizer pumps."

On the other hand, while wood chippings may in some cases be less attractive, they help to create a better habitat in which your garden plants grow. Organic mulches definitely moderate the soil's temperature, they provide raw material for essential organisms like earthworms, (see article called "The world's greatest gardener!") and as they break down they contribute humus to the soil. All these factors reduce pest and disease infestations, improve the soil's structure, and in the long run help to provide balanced nutriment for the plants

For organic mulches to be effective, they need to be spread to a depth of about 10 cm, after the initial quantity has settled. This means you need to spread about 15cm in order to end up with a layer of some 10 cm, and you'll need to add a bit each year as the chippings closest to the soil's surface break down. Be careful to keep the mulch away from tree trunks and shrub stems. It could cause rot to set in.

There are many reasons for spreading a layer of pebbles or wood chippings on top of the soil around the garden plants, otherwise known as mulching. A mulch layer is said to retard weeds, regulate the top-soil temperature, save water by reducing evaporation from the soil and prevent soil erosion. All this is true in principle, but merely spreading some mulch does not necessarily produce satisfactory results. How then can it be used most effectively?

The use of an inorganic material like decorative pebbles, is often part of an overall design, especially in Mediterranean style gardens. They are best employed as a ground cover, with a few sculptural plants dotted within them. If the bed however is to be covered by plants, then pebbles from my experience, end up being more of a nuisance than a benefit, because they make plant feeding and weed removal amongst other tasks, more problematical.

Let's take then a situation where a prostrate ground cover species is to be planted at a distance of one meter between the plants. The two principle advantages of spreading an organic mulch such as wood chippings between the plants, is that the soil conditions are actually improved, and the temperature of the top layers of the soil are regulated. This is of considerable significance in hot dry climates, where the temperature at the soils' surface can reach 50c and more.

Mulching cannot be isolated from other gardening tasks such as feeding. An excellent way of overcoming the practical inconvenience of feeding the plants through an existing mulch layer, is to incorporate into the soil, massive quantities of compost before planting. If compost is dug in to the soil at a rate of 60 liters per square meter, then together with the wood chippings slowly adding humus to the soil as they break down, there should be little reason to feed for about 5 years! Added to the fact that with a mulch layer, there is no need to hoe and cultivate the top soil, a significant saving in labor can be achieved. One word of warning though. With such quantities only use compost that has been thoroughly broken down and is from a known and reliable source.

Despite its many benefits, it is important to recognize the limitations of mulching. To be effective in retarding weeds, organic mulches should be spread to a net depth of at least 10cm. As at least 5cm is liable to settle, the gross depth of material should therefore be some 15cm. This makes wood chippings a relatively expensive option. Mulches, while significantly reducing the germination rate amongst annual weed seeds, generally have little effect on perennial weeds. With regard to saving water, they are most suitable for drip irrigation, but much less so where sprinklers are used, as the mulch layer absorbs a considerable amount of the moisture dispersed by the sprinklers.

For further information on this topic, click on the link below, and then on the Articles page where the following, arranged alphabetically can be found:

* Preventing Weeds In A Winter Mediterranean Garden

*Five Excellent Reasons For Mulching Your Garden Beds