How to use mulch?
Contents ✓
HOW MULCH WORKS, WHICH IS RIGHT AND HOW TO USE
Do you know why they mulch the soil in the garden? “So that weeds do not grow,” you say. Or so that the strawberries do not get dirty on the ground.
Yes it is. But there are other reasons. And also the rules for using mulch. And mistakes that are best avoided.
HOW MULCH WORKS
1. Prevents the growth of weeds, because without sunlight they, like any plant, die. And if the strongest specimens break through a thick layer of peat or wood chips, then black covering material or film does not give weeds a chance.
2. Keeps the soil loose, since rain does not compact it, and earthworms live well under the mulching layer. As a result, the root system breathes well. Protects the soil from erosion.
H. Does not allow moisture to evaporate, so you can take a break from watering. Saving not only strength, but also time and water! The black film is especially effective in this case.
4. Does not allow the soil to overheat in the summer and supercool in the winter. Reduces temperature differences day and night. Keeps warm in the soil. Especially black non-woven fabric and black film. They heat up in the sun and give heat to the earth and roots (in the northern regions this is especially true).
5. Keeps the crop clean. Most of all this applies, of course, to garden strawberries. The berries fall on a dry and clean mulching material, do not get dirty and do not get sick.
6. Gives the site a well-groomed appearance.
7. Mulch enhances soil fertility. Under it, not only earthworms feel better, but also microorganisms, and they all participate in the decomposition of organics, the formation of humus. Organic mulching materials themselves give up nutrients (during the decomposition of organics, carbon dioxide is also released, which is necessary for photosynthesis).
A layer of mulch protects the humus layer from sunlight and thus prevents its destruction.
WHAT ARE MULCHING MATERIALS
Reference by topic: Mulch and mulching of soil (photo)
1. Organic. This is mowed grass and torn weeds (without seeds!), Sawdust, shavings, wood chips, conifer needles, cones, straw and hay, compost, humus, peat, paper and cardboard.
2. Inorganic. Non-woven covering materials, film, gravel, crushed stone, marble chips.
Mowed grass - excellent mulching material. You don’t need to pay for it, it’s easy to get it - just mow the lawn. At the same time, it protects against weeds and soil desiccation, looks neat, and nourishes plants as it decomposes. Just do not put fresh grass right away in a thick layer - it will begin to rot and rot. Either dry first, or ted more often.
Hay over time, it also rots and nourishes the soil, but you need to be careful - slugs and other pests often hide under it, and mice in a thick layer. Seeds of weeds may also be in the hay.
Wood waste (shavings, sawdust)if they are poured fresh, nitrogen is taken from the soil, and accordingly, from the plants. More precisely, nitrogen is needed for bacteria that decompose sawdust. Therefore, they are preliminarily shed with urea or even mixed with sand, nitrogen fertilizer and dolomite flour and kept for 1 to 2 years in a pile. But it’s best to put sawdust in compost.
Needles and cones can acidify the soilTherefore, under most trees and shrubs they should not be put. And, for example, under the blueberry is not only possible, but also necessary.
cardboard it perfectly protects against weeds, earthworms useful for the soil take shelter under it, but it decays until the next season. True, the cardboard sheets spread in the garden do not look very attractive (you can sprinkle them on top with ground or mowed grass). Decaying, cardboard does no harm, since synthetic glue is not used in its production, only bone glue. There is no harm from newsprint and magazine paper: for a long time there has been no lead and tin in the composition of printing inks. The exception is glossy magazines, the pages of which are coated with a special composition with acrylic compounds.
Compost not the best mulching material, contrary to popular belief. Think about how much time and effort it takes to make compost! And they prepare it partially from the same mulching organic materials that can be used on their own. In the process of composting, the amount of organic matter decreases. At the exit, we get ready “food” for plants, but it is more expedient to introduce it into the soil for digging or when planting. Compost scattered as mulch partially loses its value. Its layer dries up, and nutrients are absorbed by plants only in the form of an aqueous solution. Have to often water - this is also work. Or pour compost in a thick layer, but rarely does anyone have excess compost. Humus under the rays of the sun is destroyed. But it is precisely to obtain humus that we compost organic matter. It turns out that such use of compost loses its meaning. Or you need to pour a mulching layer on top of the compost layer, which will protect the compost from destruction.
Black film and non-woven fabric - great mulch. Non-woven material is moisture permeable, but may fade and tear over time. The film does not let rain water through, so you can make cuts. Through them, moisture flows directly to the roots (especially if such cuts are made just below the general soil level).
During a period of prolonged drought, you can water it through plastic bottles: cut the bottom, and stick the neck without a cork next to the ground in the root zone. For 1 square. m need about 3-4 1, 5-liter bottles. It is convenient to feed through such an irrigation system.
Crushed stone, gravel, marble chips they are good for their durability, decorativeness and the fact that pests do not settle in them.
Separately, it must be said about the color of the mulch. The black color of the film, non-woven material, compost does not reflect the sun's rays, but absorbs, so the black materials heat up more. Accordingly, the soil heats up. In the middle lane and north it is a plus, and in the south it is rather a minus. Light hay, straw, sawdust reflect rays that enhance photosynthesis, and the soil does not overheat.
MULCH - MAJOR ERRORS
1. Use as a mulch of fallen leaves. Most likely, they will include pathogens or pests, which will manifest themselves in the next season. Better not use such a mulch. But the leaves can be laid in compost.
2. Do not stack the mulch too early in the spring. It prevents thawing and warming of the soil. You need to remember this in the event that the mulching material has remained since last year or if you used peat, sawdust for the purpose of shelter. It is best to slide or scatter the thick layer and bring it back later. Otherwise, the kidneys may wake up, and the roots will still sleep in the cold earth and will not be able to provide nutrition and moisture to the aboveground part. On the contrary, it is possible to promote the earliest possible warming up of the soil if you cover it with a black film. How to find out that the soil has warmed up and it's time to mulch? Buds will begin to wake up and grass will grow.
H. Do not allow the caking or baking of such mulching materials as freshly cut grass, straw, hay.
4. Before laying the mulch, loosen the soil.
5. Do not put the mulch close to the trunk, back off a bit.
Contact with moist organic mulch will hurt.
6. Organic mulch decomposes over time and the layer becomes thinner. In this case, organics will have to be added during the season.
MULCHING GARDEN AND GARDEN - REVIEWS AND TIPS
MULCHING WITH USE
Mulching the soil with any organic materials (foliage, grass, tops, wood chips, etc.). leads to an improvement in its structure, restoration and increase in fertility. In nature, this process occurs naturally.
I love to mulch my plantings! After all, weeding, loosening and frequent watering are canceled! I can't water every day even in hot weather.
HOW MULCH WORKS
- Protects the soil from the action of the sun and wind (in winter - from freezing).
- Makes the soil friable, enriches it with nutrients.
- Prevents rapid evaporation of moisture.
- Suppresses the growth of weeds, makes the site cleaner and neater.
Materials for mulching: compost, mature humus, lawn grass, weeds, meadow grass, green manure tops, hay, foliage, as an option - food waste (very nutritious material that we hide under the mowed lawn grass so as not to spoil the look of the garden). And more recently, I have become very fond of sunflower husks.
Decorative mulch: pine bark, wood chips (including colored), cedar husk, cones, shredded branches, coconut chips.
SCIENTIFIC APPROACH
In the spring, we rake off the old mulch so that the soil warms up, at the end of May we return it back and add fresh mulch on top. We mulch almost everything: herbaceous perennials, ornamental and berry shrubs, tree trunks, beds, uncovered paths, soil in greenhouses, etc.
Under the decorative mulch, I usually lay a black covering material with a density of 80-120 g / sq. m, can be in two layers.
In the fall, I cover free areas with a thick layer of mulch that I did not have time to sow with green manure.
IMPORTANT!
Mulching does not work on depleted, poor soil. Possibly even a deterioration in the development of plants! A full-fledged mulch that is beneficial should be 8-10 cm thick.
© Author: Natalia GURYANOVA, Head of the Center for Natural Agriculture "Shining", Chelyabinsk
ABOUT THE MULCH AND MY USE OF IT
For millions of years, nature has been mulching meadows and forests with last year's foliage and grass. Aerobic bacteria, processing plant residues, emit carbon dioxide, which, when interacting with moisture, forms carbonic acid, which is consumed by plants. When bacteria die, they break down into proteins, which are further decomposed to water-soluble amino acids - this organically bound nitrogen is absorbed by plant roots. Nature has not provided any other nitrogen in a form available to plants.
Therefore, the main purpose of mulch is to provide plants with the basic nutrients - carbon and nitrogen, and suppressing weed growth and retaining moisture is just a useful side effect.
The best material for mulch is dried grass, which contains all the nutrients necessary for bacteria. When using straw, shavings, sawdust, etc. as mulch, which have a low nutritional value for bacteria (there is practically no bound nitrogen used for protein synthesis), it is necessary to moisten the mulch with a solution of nitrogen fertilizers. This is important: to feed the nitrogen not to the plants, but to the bacteria. The concentration of the solution is 10 g (1 tsp) of urea per 10 liters of water. In order not to wait for the next portion of the fertilizer to dissolve, I prepare a concentrated solution.
To do this, I dissolve half a pack (0 kg) of fertilizers in a bucket of water, then 5 liter of concentrated solution contains 1 g of fertilizers. I add 50 ml of concentrated solution to a bucket of water and get the necessary 200 g. Consumption rate is a bucket of solution for 10 running meters of beds and 2-4 m of passages between them. With a solution of this concentration I also make foliar feeding of intensively growing plants - cucumbers, zucchini, etc.
Mulch performance can be improved by increasing the concentration of aerobic bacteria. A plastic barrel with a volume of 200 liters is half filled with weeds. I chop large stems with pruning shears. After three days, the plants die and begin to rot. Nitrogen is not enough for the intensive reproduction of bacteria, so I pour in 1 liter of concentrated urea solution and fill the barrel with water.
To provide aerobic bacteria with air, I lower the aerator from the aquarium compressor to the bottom of the barrel.
After a few days, a foam cap appears on the surface of the solution - the number of bacteria has reached a maximum. I water the mulch with this solution, diluting with water if necessary. The odor from the barrel is practically absent (an unpleasant odor appears at the end of fermentation, when most of the bacteria die and begin to decompose). Having selected the liquid, I add a bucket of crackers to the barrel (I dry the remnants of the bread all winter), 1 liter of concentrated urea solution and fill it with water. From the second half of June, I additionally add 1 liter of concentrated potassium sulfate solution.
After waiting for intensive fermentation, I select the solution. I unload the non-rotten residues from the barrel as mulch under the raspberry bushes, after which I repeat the process.
I regularly replenish the mulch by spreading fresh cut grass on the surface with a thin layer. The thickness of the mulch layer depends on the weather: in a rainy summer - 3-5 cm, in a dry summer and in greenhouses - at least 20 cm.
© Author: Konstantin
See also: The best MULCH - what is she? Types of mulch - a memo to the summer resident
MULTI TYPES AND MULCHING RULES - VIDEO
© Author: A. POLUNINA, agronomist
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- Clay, sod-podzolic soil in the area - what is growing and how to improve
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- The mother-in-law's feeding scheme for cucumbers is very successful!
- Which mulch is better?
- Raspberries: top dressing for sweet berries, regardless of variety
- 2 best green manures for improving soil fertility according to agricultural sciences
- Fertilizers for indoor plants
- Winter garden dressing
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Tell me, will the needles from the New Year trees be useful for the garden?
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- Coniferous beauties (spruce, pine, fir) after the New Year holidays can serve the owners one more service. Chop thin twigs and, together with the crumbling needles, fill them in paper bags (cardboard boxes, thick sugar bags), store in a dry place (pantry, garage). In the spring, this material is useful to mulch the soil around the plantings of onions and strawberries (so that weeds do not grow and do not annoy the disease), as well as the root zone of flowering perennials that love acidified soil (hydrangeas, heather, etc.).
In addition, fresh needles are good protection against small rodents. not every mouse, even in a hungry season, will climb for a tasty root through a thorny barrier.
The coniferous trunk and the thickest branches can be cut into pieces, brought to the country and burned, having obtained excellent charcoal, with which plants are powdered during the growing season from harmful insects.
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Does sawdust mulching affect soil acidity? Wouldn't such a mulch harm flowers?
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- Mulch helps retain moisture in the soil, makes it more loose, protects flowers from weeds. In addition, during the decomposition of mulch, the soil is saturated with the necessary micro and macro elements, and the number of beneficial microorganisms increases in it.
When sawdust (especially conifers) is added, the soil can become acidic. To neutralize, it is enough to add 200 g of chalk or dolomite flour per 1 sq. Mulch with a layer thickness of 10-15 cm. It is important to mulch not fresh sawdust, but rotted for 2-3 years (adding humus or a microbiological preparation, such as “ Baikal EM-1 ”, reduces the period of decaying at positive temperature, respectively, to six months or 3-4 months).
If you want your planting to look beautiful, use wood chips or bark (it looks more natural). The bark does not decompose much longer due to the fact that it has a larger fraction, which means that it can not harm either the soil or the flowers.