Confused about mulch

[heirloomgal]

Thank you!!!

@Alasgun told me about his lactobacillus spray and how to make it. It broke my compost down incredibly fast when I dumped what I thought was a failed one into it. Here's the link: https://www.dudegrows.com/soup-lactobacillus-culture/

 

[flowerbug]

@ducks4you You really seem to know a lot about home composting methods, and one of the last major things to be dealt with in my yard is the giant 'compost' pile (if you could call it that). It began as a place to bring garden material at years end, yard raking, weeds and whatever else organic non-food waste there was. We kept out any large tree limbs and big things like that. My hope had always been that someday I could harvest some soil from it. The majority of my pile today - after 11 years or so - is leaves, twigs, guinea pig bedding, expired garden vegetation, a bit of tree clippings and maybe the odd fall pumpkin. No kitchen wastes because we have mega bears. Every year I go out with a pitchfork and poke around and there is never dirt to be had. If there is, it is so mixed up with woody material I can't actually scoop any of it up. My pile is now rather large about 3-4 ft high and maybe 10 feet across. I would LOVE to be able to convert this pile into usable soil of some kind. Is there any hope????? I wonder if I could saturate the pile with something to encourage things to break down faster? (If a picture would help I can do that, but it won't be pretty!)

i dig holes deep enough that stuff like that can go in the bottom and then top it back off with garden soil deep enough to give the plants enough space for their roots. if you have a tractor to dig with and move the material that can make this much easier too.

in arid climates you want the hole to be deep enough to also help collect and hold moisture, in more wet climates you can do things higher up so that the area is either grade neutral or perched up above like a bit of a raised bed.

years later you can stir that area up and mix the rotted organic matter throughout the soil profile if you want.

i often stash organic materials like this down deep where they turn into a peat like material, the worms and other soil creatures may find it and use it during the hot and cold times of the season too.

i don't formally compost much of anything outside. i have a worm compost system i use inside for most food scraps.

i have no problem burying meat scraps, bones, fats, etc out in the gardens, if buried deeply enough i haven't had them disturbed by the many animals here (raccoons, coyotes, etc.). clay is a pretty good sealer. i've even buried some pretty fragrant road kill and nothing bothered it. you'd think something like a large wild turkey buried down a foot and a half would be very attractive to some creature but nothing disturbed it. someone hit it out front in the road and made a tremendous mess that we didn't want to smell all summer so i got the wheelbarrow out and hauled it and buried it. the next day Mom went out and picked up all the feathers so i buried them too. still stunk. it was a few rainy days.

for those who don't have a sensitive reaction to such things or a gentle sense of smell i do recommend road kill as a fertiliser. it's better than wasting it IMO. not that i do this often, but for animals in the road around our property i'd rather have something buried instead of having to smell it all summer.

the past few weeks i could have all the deer i wanted if i had a way to move them and a way to dig and bury them.

lactobacillus is usually around in many areas already. unless you have some kind of very arid environment or haven't grown any garden plants in a space it might not be a huge population but it should be around. yogurt normally will have some, most fermented pickles or other similar veggies should have some. most wild greens will probably have some. etc.

 

[heirloomgal]

if you have a tractor to dig with and move the material that can make this much easier too.

I wish! There is so much garden stuff to compost, between tomato plants, and pole bean plants etc, that digging holes for everything would require a tractor for sure.

I don't think in my area I'd be able to get away with burying much, bears are already out in my yard pulling up chunks of sod to find grubs. The few times I took wee little chances with the odd thing out there, a bear showed up within a day..

 

[Zeedman]

A very comprehensive summary, @Ridgerunner , you stole much of my fire.

Once certain mulches rot they add a lot of nutrients to the soil. To me this is a huge benefit of certain mulches.

For that reason, my preferred mulch is green-cut hay, not straw. The hay releases some nutrients as it breaks down - and breaks down quickly. It also is a good food supply for the worm population. By the end of the summer, worms will have consumed at least 1/2 of the hay; but at that point, weed suppression is no longer an issue. I may lay additional hay or grass clippings in pathways, enough to prevent mud splash & keep me from tracking mud into the house.

Personally, I don't like straw as mulch. It is effective as a weed barrier, but IMO is too effective at blocking the sun's warmth. It also breaks down much more slowly if turned under, and some level of wheat seed - sometimes excessive - is unavoidable. Hay can introduce weed seed too, and I've had a few bad lots over the years... but overall, my results using timothy, clover, or alfalfa hay have been very positive.

Straw or wood chips and stuff like that gives some bugs like squash bugs great hiding places. I've seen the recommendation to not put mulch right up to the plant but leave a bare spot around the stem to protect them from critters. You can't see mole or vole tunnels. Some diseases live in the ground like blight, the spores can splash up on the plant in a rain or if you sprinkle water. Mulch can help stop that. Mulch right up next to the plant may keep it wet so certain molds can grow. It's a mixed bag.

As a rule, I will not apply hay or any organic mulch around vining crops, because that just provides habitat for squash bugs and cucumber beetles, and makes it harder to eliminate them when they appear. Plastic or agricultural weed cloth would seem to be better under the vines, but they can also be an invitation for voles to move in (as I found out last year). Protected from prowling cats, voles began raising their young in my gherkin patch last year, emerging from cover just long enough to chew off half of the vines at the ground. Once exposed, and after I quickly dispatched their young, the voles vanished.

Black plastic can be one of the keys to success when growing heat lovers in cooler climates though. Sweet potatoes and watermelon in particular will benefit from the higher soil temperatures... but I will try to use only a foot or two around the plants, in hope that the smaller covered area will allow the cats to keep the voles at bay.

In my garden, weed control is issue #2 - the primary purpose of mulch is to prevent the negative effects of mud splash. Beans in particular really benefit from that. I don't apply mulch around seedlings, since that can encourage slugs & bugs to attack the plants while they are most vulnerable. So most years, I don't mulch the beans until they have at least 1-2 true leaves. The seedlings typically look somewhat chlorotic & unhealthy at that point; but after being mulched & sprayed down to remove soil from the leaves, they turn green with a few days. The transformation is sometimes quite dramatic. The stabilization of soil moisture also improves blossom set & pod quality. The improvement of pod quality is especially notable for yardlong beans.

Mulching around tomatoes & peppers helps to stabilize soil moisture, which in turn improves blossom set & reduces blossom end rot. The results with peppers honestly surprise me, since I would have assumed that lower soil temperatures would reduce production, and that doesn't seem to be the case. I remember reading somewhere that peppers benefit from higher humidity, and perhaps the moist hay helps to maintain higher humidity around the plants. I am also surprised that the eggplants I now grow prosper when heavily mulched, since eggplant is as heat-loving as okra... but based upon my early trials (where most eggplants died shortly after flowering) most eggplant varieties would probably not have responded as favorably.

A heavy mulch of hay does offer potential habitat for mice & voles; but that doesn't seem to be the main problem, since hay offers no protection from cats. I find that mice & voles seem to be attracted less to mulch, than by the dense leaf canopy that develops in mid season.

I DO pull seedless weeds and throw them on my lawn and use my mower to "compost" them. Just sayin...

I throw any weeds with seeds onto my lawn, for the same purpose. Few garden weeds can compete with sod, and those seeds will never find their way back into the garden. All other weeds are either left to die in the garden where they were pulled, or dried & used elsewhere as mulch. The only exceptions would be things like purslane, crabgrass, or anything else which is likely to re-root.

Regarding compost: like all of the farmers locally, I compost in situ. After the frost puts an end to the garden, I remove all poles & hardware, then mow the entire garden until everything is finely chopped. This encourages the rapid decomposition of plant debris. When weather allows, I will turn everything under, with the addition of shredded leaves whenever possible. Any trimmings or peelings taken out of the garden are returned to the garden... I do not introduce foreign material into the garden from supermarket produce, to avoid the possible introduction of new diseases. Those materials get tossed into my tree line, where scavengers generally destroy them quickly.

 

[heirloomgal]

voles began raising their young in my gherkin patch last year

I chuckled a bit when I read this because a couple years ago I found a nest of mouse babies under a bunch of my straw mulch. I heard them before I saw them when I started raking around. I thought that was just an odd and various thing, until I read about yours....

 

[flowerbug]

I wish! There is so much garden stuff to compost, between tomato plants, and pole bean plants etc, that digging holes for everything would require a tractor for sure.

I don't think in my area I'd be able to get away with burying much, bears are already out in my yard pulling up chunks of sod to find grubs. The few times I took wee little chances with the odd thing out there, a bear showed up within a day..

bears we don't have around here, but once in a while i hear a rumor of them.

 

[heirloomgal]

bears we don't have around here, but once in a while i hear a rumor of them.

@flowerbug that would definitely explain why you can bury stuff! they frequent here more than just about any other animal - raccoons are sneaky so I don't know about those, probably around but never seen

once while I was squatting down on the ground watering some starter plants in pots, very focused, in a backyard corner where my house and sunroom meet, I whipped around looking for something I needed and found myself looking directly into the nostril of a bear, and all those fine little wrinkles on the nose, which looks so much like a dog nose that close up, and then into the cloudy brown eyes, which don't operate in unison really, as I stared into them and he into mine

luckily, i was trapped in a corner so I could meaningfully experience that my instinct for survival was fully intact, he however was not concerned about human noise being a young adult, he was instead curious about my breath because he was head bouncing in the air to fully take the interesting smell ( I may have just had lunch)

he did decide though that I was not of particular edible interest and eventually sauntered off
to return the next day

 

[flowerbug]

up north there was an old dump (that they eventually closed down) where people would go to watch the bears pick through the trash looking for food. my friend and i sat in there and a bear put his nose on the window. there was some kind of something in the nose secretions which made that nose print stay there for months afterwards, well of course my friend wasn't one to wash a car much either, but it was fun to watch.

once.

later on i saw that Far Side cartoon with the Polar Bears pulling the top off an igloo and commenting to each other about the tasty interior contents - and of course thought of that tiny car, which probably would not have stood up to abuse from bears...

we fished the streams up in that area all summer and never once saw any bears but we saw plenty of fresh signs including water that was still moving from having been disturbed by a bear walking through it. my friend packed a large pistol. i could run faster than him...

we have raccoons here every night wandering around. they don't damage anything and we don't plant corn which is about the only plant that they will harvest, they will dig up plants in the gardens if the greenhouse has used fish emulsion fertilizer but we don't normally have them doing too much of that now. we put the onion starts inside the fence though because if we leave them outside more of them will get dug up by the many more raccoons that must wander around out there instead of those going inside the fence.

 

[heirloomgal]

there was some kind of something in the nose secretions which made that nose print stay there for months afterwards

literally burst out laughing, those noses are serious business man

 

[heirloomgal]

up north there was an old dump (that they eventually closed down) where people would go to watch the bears pick through the trash looking for food. my friend and i sat in there and a bear put his nose on the window. there was some kind of something in the nose secretions which made that nose print stay there for months afterwards, well of course my friend wasn't one to wash a car much either, but it was fun to watch.

once.

later on i saw that Far Side cartoon with the Polar Bears pulling the top off an igloo and commenting to each other about the tasty interior contents - and of course thought of that tiny car, which probably would not have stood up to abuse from bears...

we fished the streams up in that area all summer and never once saw any bears but we saw plenty of fresh signs including water that was still moving from having been disturbed by a bear walking through it. my friend packed a large pistol. i could run faster than him...

we have raccoons here every night wandering around. they don't damage anything and we don't plant corn which is about the only plant that they will harvest, they will dig up plants in the gardens if the greenhouse has used fish emulsion fertilizer but we don't normally have them doing too much of that now. we put the onion starts inside the fence though because if we leave them outside more of them will get dug up by the many more raccoons that must wander around out there instead of those going inside the fence.

this is too hilarious, no cars don't stand up if they're determined
but they are almost never interested in us for snacks thankfully
(unless we are talking grizzlies of course)
luckily for us those guys are a long ways away